10 Yuan The Grand Canal, Shandong

The Grand Canal series, issued by the People's Bank of China, has commemorated individual provincial sections of the world's longest and oldest artificial waterway across multiple years. The Shandong section — roughly 500 kilometers running through cities including Jining and Liaocheng — was a critical artery during the Ming and Qing dynasties, moving grain tributes north to Beijing under a state logistics system called the caoyun. When the Yellow River repeatedly shifted course through Shandong, entire stretches became unnavigable, forcing the Qing court into costly rerouting projects and eventually contributing to the canal's decline in the mid-nineteenth century, when coastal steamship routes rendered it redundant.