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The Grand Canal is a vast waterway system in the north-eastern and central-eastern plains of China, running from Beijing in the north to Zhejiang province in the south.
The 48 mile-long waterway allows ships to pass between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Before the canal was built ships would have to travel around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. That would be a voyage of an additional 8000 miles! It takes a cruise ship about 12 hours to traverse the canal. When you cruise through the canal three sets of locks of the two-lane canal work as water elevators that lift the ships to the level of Gatun Lake, 85 feet above sea level, and later lower them again to sea level on the other side of the Isthmus of Panama.