Yellow River
Encyclopedia : Y : YE : YEL : Yellow River
- For other Yellow Rivers, see Yellow River (disambiguation).
The Yellow River (Traditional Chinese: 黃河; Simplified Chinese: 黄河; Hanyu Pinyin: Huáng Hé[listen] ; Wade-Giles: Hwang-ho) is 5464 km long and is the second longest river in China, after the Yangtze.
Introduction
The headwaters of the Yellow River lie in the Kunlun Mountains in north-western Qinghai province, where the river originates at an elevation of 4,500 m in the Yueguzonglie Basin located on the northern slope of the Bayankara Mountains in the Tibetan Plateau. From its source, the river flows at first eastwards, bends northwestward, and then flows east again until it reaches the town of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, where its Great Northern Bend starts. The bend extends northward through the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region into Inner Mongolia.
The river turns then to flow almost straight to the south, forming the border between the Provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi. About 130 km northeast of Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, the Yellow River turns again to flow eastwards once more. It reaches the coastal lowlands of Eastern China near the town of Kaifeng and flows through them towards its mouth in northeastern direction and empties into Bohai. In total, it drains an area of appr. 752,000 km².
Despite this large drainage area, the water flow of the Yellow River is comparatively small. It amounts to only one 15th of that of the Yangtze and only one-fifth of that of the Pearl River, although the drainage area of the latter is less than half that of the Huang He. This is due to the aridity of much of the Yellow River's drainage area, which includes the Ordos Desert along the river's northern bend. Although the eastern parts of the drainage area in Henan and Shandong are much wetter, they cannot compensate for the effect of the arid portions.
Characteristics of the Yellow River
The Yellow River is notable for the amount of silt it carries, amounting to 1.6 billion tons annually at the point where it descends from the Loess Plateau. If the river is running to the sea with sufficient volume, 1.4 billion tons are carried to the sea. In modern times, since 1972 when it first went dry, the river has gone dry in its lower reaches, from Jinan to the sea, in most years, in 1997 for 226 days. The low volume of the river is due to increased demands on the river for use in irrigation which has increased by a factor of five since 1950. Water diverted from the river by 1999 served 140 million people and irrigated 74000 km² of land. Highest volume occurs during the rainy season, from July to October, when 60% of the volume of the river flows. Water for irrigation, on the other hand, is needed between March and June. In order to capture excess water for use when needed and for flood control and electricity generation several dams have been built, but due to the high silt load their life is expected to be limited. Several schemes have been proposed to divert water from the Yangtze River, one in the western headwaters of the rivers where they are closest to one another, another from the upper reaches of the Han River, and a third using the route of the Grand Canal.Due to its heavy load of silt the Yellow River is a depositing stream, that is, it deposits part of its carried burden of soil in its bed in stretches where it is flowing slowly. These deposits elevate the riverbed which flows between natural levees in its lower reaches. Should a flood occur the river may break out of the levees into the surrounding lower flood plain and adopt a new course. Historically this has occurred about once every hundred years. In modern times considerable effort has been made to strengthen levees and control floods.
The role of the Yellow River as cradle of Chinese civilization
During the long history of China, the Yellow River has been considered a blessing as well as a curse and has been nicknamed both "China's Pride" (Zhōngguó de Jiāoào) and "China's Sorrow" (Zhōngguó de Tòng). Records indicate that, from 602 BC to present, the river's course made at least 5 major large-scale changes in direction and its levees were breached more than 1,500 times. A major course change that took place in 1194 took over the Huai River drainage system throughout the next 700 years. The mud in the Yellow River literally blocked the mouth of the Huai River and left thousands homeless. The Yellow River adopted its present course in 1897 after the final course change occurred in 1855. Currently, Yellow River flows through Jinan, capital of the Shandong province and ends in the Bohai Sea.The river gets its yellow color mostly from the fine-grained calcareous silts originated from the Loess Plateau which are carried in the flow. Centuries of silt deposition and diking has caused the river to flow above the surrounding farmland, making flooding a critically dangerous problem. Flooding of the Yellow River has caused some of the highest death tolls in world history, with the 1887 Huang He flood killing 900,000-2,000,000 and the 1931 Huang He flood killing 1,000,000-3,700,000. In 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Nationalist troops under Chiang Kai-Shek broke the levees holding back the Yellow River in order to stop the advancing Japanese troops. The river at that time flooded a huge area and the floodwaters took some 500,000-900,000 lives.
Another historic source of devastating floods was the collapse of upstream ice dams in Inner Mongolia with their accompanying sudden release of vast quantities of impounded water. There have been 11 such major floods in the past century, each causing tremendous loss of life and property. Nowadays, explosives dropped from aircraft are used to break the ice dams before they become dangerous.
Sometimes the Yellow River is poetically called the Zhuo Liu (濁流), or the "Muddy Flow." The Chinese expression "when the Yellow River flows clear" is similar to the English expression "when hell freezes over."
Some of the known flood defences used in ancient times were the building of ditches, walls(dams), levees, and rebound channels to route floodwaters around a blockage. The main problem was that the solutions were localised and sometimes the dams were too small and weak for the impact. If the river broke down the defences, it would cause far more damage than if no levees had been built.
Tributaries of the Yellow River
The Wei River and Fen River are the chief tributaries of the Yellow river.Hydroelectric power dams on the Yellow River
Hydroelectric power dams were built across the Yellow River at Liujia Gorge, Lanzhou, Sanmen Gorge, and Xiaolangdi.Provinces and cities on the Yellow River
The provinces of Hebei and Henan derive their names from the Huang He. Their names mean respectively "north" and "south of the (Yellow) River".Major cities located along the Yellow River include (starting from the source): Lanzhou, Wuhai, Baotou, Kaifeng, and Jinan.
Further reading
- Sinclair, Kevin. 1987. The Yellow River: A 5000 Year Journey Through China. (Based on the television documentary). Child & Associates Publishing, Chatswood, Sydney, Australia. ISBN 0-86777-347-2
External links
- [Yellow River Home Page at UMassD]
- [Yellow River delta Information at LSU]
- [Listen to the Yellow River Ballade from the Yellow River Cantata]
See also
- Grand Canal of China
- Geography of China
- North China Plain
- Loess Plateau
- List of rivers of Asia
- List of rivers in China
- Water resources of China
- Yellow Sea
- Yellow River Cantata
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.