Today, the length of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is about 1797 kilometers. But in terms of length, the scale of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal is larger than that of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal today.

The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is one of the earliest canals in the world. At that time, it took a lot of manpower and financial resources to build it, and because of its unique design, it can cross five major rivers at the same time, including the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Qiantang River and the Huaihe River and Haihe River. Even today, it is still very useful and facilitates the transportation of goods in many places. It has a history of more than 2, years and has become a world heritage. It can be said that its reputation is very great.

The decline of the northern section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal was first caused by the Yellow River taking the northern river into the Bohai Sea in 1855, which suddenly blocked the Jining section of Shandong Province today, and the north and south were blocked, resulting in the lifeline from Beijing to the south being blocked. Later this part of the transportation was forced to be transshipped by sea.

The northern section of the Grand Canal has been out of use since the mid-19th century, so a large number of original boatmen settled on both sides of the canal and occupied the river. Correspondingly, with the development of the city, in order to save money, many urban bridges have reduced their spans without considering the transportation function of the canal, which makes the canal no longer have the transportation function.