More than 700 years ago, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo trekked to China, leaving a deep impression of the Grand Canal — the country's major waterway artery — and providing the detailed portrayal in the famous book, The Travels of Marco Polo, that stirred Europeans' curiosity about the Eastern world.

This also became the inspiration for writer Xu Zechen's best-selling novel Northward, which won the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award thanks to its epic recounting of the canal and riverside people over a turbulent span of more than one century.