Yellow River
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Current Course of the Yellow River with major cities
Origin Bayan Har Mountains, Qinghai Province
Mouth Bohai Sea
Basin countries People's Republic of China
Length 5,464 kilometers (3,395 mi)
Source elevation 4500 m (14,765 ft)
Avg. discharge 2,571 m³/s (90,808 ft³/s)
Basin area 752 000 km²
The Yellow River or Huang He / Hwang Ho (Chinese: 黃河; pinyin: Huáng Hé; Mongolian: Hatan Gol, Queen river) is the second-longest river in China (after the Yangtze River) and the sixth-longest in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 kilometers (3,395 mi). Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China, it flows through nine provinces of China and empties into the Bohai Sea. The Yellow River basin has an east-west extent of 1900 km (1,180 mi) and a north-south extent of 1100 km (684 mi). Total basin area is 742,443 km² (290,520 mi²).
The Yellow River is called "the cradle of Chinese civilization", as its basin is the birthplace of the northern Chinese civilizations and was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. But frequent devastating flooding largely due to the elevated river bed in its lower course, has also earned it the unenviable names "China's Sorrow" and "Scourge of the Sons of Han."
Early Chinese literature refers to the Yellow River simply as He (河), the word that has come to mean simply "river" in modern language (in ancient times, however, 川 and 水 were used in the meaning "river"). The first appearance of the name "Yellow River" (黃河) is in the Book of Han (simplified Chinese: 汉书; traditional Chinese: 漢書; pinyin: Hàn Shū) written in the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 9). The name "Yellow River" describes the perennial ochre-yellow colour of the muddy water in the lower course of the river. The yellow color comes from loess suspended in the water.
Sometimes the Yellow River is poetically called the "Muddy Flow" (simplified Chinese: 浊流; traditional Chinese: 濁流; pinyin: Zhuó Liú). The Chinese idiom "when the Yellow River flows clear" is used to refer to an event that will never happen and is similar to the English expression "when pigs fly".
In Qinghai, its Tibetan name is "river of the peacock" (Wylie: r Ma chu, p maqu 玛曲/瑪曲).
Yellow River in culture
- Mother river, China's Sorrow.
Traditionally, it is believed that the Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River basin. The Chinese refer to the river as "the Mother River" and "the cradle of the 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" (simplified Chinese: 中国的骄傲; traditional Chinese: 中國的驕傲; pinyin: Zhōngguóde Jiāo'ào) and "China's Sorrow" (simplified Chinese: 中国的痛; traditional Chinese: 中國的痛; pinyin: Zhōngguóde Tòng).
History of the changing Yellow River
The river is extremely prone to flooding. It has flooded 1,593 times in the last 3,000–4,000 years, while its main course changed 12 times[when?][citation needed], with at least 5 large-scale changes[which?] from 602 BC to present. Another source says more than 1,500 inundations and 26 changes of course (9 major) in the last 3,000 years. These course changes are due to the large amount of loess carried by the river and continuously deposited along the bottom of the river's canal. This sedimentation causes a natural dam to slowly accrue. Eventually, the enormous amount of waters have to find a new way to the sea, causing a flood in a new valley. Flooding was unpredictable, causing difficulty to farmers.
Ancient times
Historical maps from the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BCE) indicate that the Yellow River at that time flowed considerably north of its present course. These maps show that after the river passed Luoyang it flowed along the border between Shanxi and Henan Provinces then continued along the border between Hebei and Shandong before emptying into Bohai Bay near present-day Tianjin.
Major floods in 11 CE are said to be the reason for the fall of the Xin dynasty (9 - 23 CE), when the river once more changed its course from the north, near Tianjin, to the south of the Shandong Peninsula.
According to Tregear, in the 10th century BC one branch followed the present course while a larger one reached the sea near Tianjin by several routes, in 602BC it shifted to south of Shantung, in AD 70 returned to its present course, in 1048 it moved to Tianjin, in 1324 it returned to south of Shantung and in 1851 it took its present course.
Medieval times
A major course change 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 previous course change occurred in 1855. Currently, the Yellow River flows through Jinan, capital of the Shandong province, and ends in the Bohai Sea, yet the eastern terminus for the Yellow River has oscillated from points north and south of the Shandong Peninsula in its many dramatic shifts over time.
The course of the river changed back and forth between the route of the Huai River and the original route of the Yellow River several times over the past 700 years. The consequent buildup of silt deposits was so heavy that the Huai River was unable to flow in its historic course after the Yellow River reverted to its northerly course for the last time in 1897.[citation needed] Instead, the water pools up into Hongze Lake and then runs southward toward the Yangtze River.[citation needed]
The river's floods account for some of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded. The flatness of North China Plain contributes to the deadliness of the floods. A slight rise in water level means a large portion of land is completely covered in water. When a flood occurs, a portion of the population initially dies from drowning, then by the spread of diseases and the ensuing famine.[citation needed]
- The 1887 Yellow River flood in the North China Plain caused an estimated 900,000 to 2,000,000 deaths.
Recent times
The river gets its yellow color mostly from the fine-grained calcareous silt which originates in the Loess Plateau and is 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 to 2,000,000 and the 1931 Huang He flood killing an estimated 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 on the North China Plain.
On June 9, 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Nationalist troops under Chiang Kai-Shek broke the levees holding back the river near the village of Huayuankou in Henan causing major flooding. The goal of the operation was to stop the advancing Japanese troops following a strategy of "using water as a substitute for soldiers" (yishui daibing). This resulted in the flooding of an area covering 54,000 km² and took some 500,000–900,000 (890,000) lives while an unknown number of Japanese soldiers were killed.[citation needed] The flood prevented the Japanese army from taking the city of Zhengzhou, but did not stop them from reaching their goal of capturing Wuhan, the city that served as the temporary capital of China at the time.
Another historical source of devastating floods is the collapse of upstream ice dams in Inner Mongolia with an 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.[citation needed]
Characteristics
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Its average discharge is said to be 2,110 cubic meters per second (32,000 for the Yangtze), with a maximun of 25,000 and minimum of 245.
The Yellow River is notable for the large amount of silt it carries—1.6 billion tons annually at the point where it descends from the Loess Plateau. If it is running to the sea with sufficient volume, 1.4 billion tons are carried to the sea annually.[citation needed]
In modern times, since 1972 when it first dried up, the river has dried up in its lower reaches many times, from Jinan to the sea in most years, in 1997 for 226 days. The low volume is due to increased agricultural irrigation, by a factor of five since 1950. Water diverted from the river as of 1999 served 140 million people and irrigated 74,000 km² (48,572 mi²) of land. The highest volume occurs during the rainy season, from July to October, when 60% of the annual volume of the river flows. Maximum demand for irrigation 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. A proposed South-North Water Transfer Project involves several schemes 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.[citation needed]