The Huang He, or Yellow River, was the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization (roughly 5000–2500 BC), where the fertile loess soil supported early agriculture. Great dynasties such as the Shang and Zhou flourished in this valley. Frequently subject to devastating floods, the river is nicknamed the "Sorrow of China" and is the backbone of Chinese culture, writing, and civilization.
Here are key historical points of the Huang He River:
Center of Ancient Civilization:
The Yellow River Valley, particularly the Loess Plateau, has been home to human settlements since 7,000 years ago, marked by the development of the Neolithic Yangshao and Longshan cultures.
Early Dynasties:
The river served as the center of government for early Chinese dynasties (including the Shang and Zhou), which developed irrigation systems, writing, and agriculture.
Origin of the Name:
The Huang He (Yellow River) gets its name from carrying large amounts of yellow silt sediment downstream from the Loess Plateau.
"China's Sorrow":
The river frequently overflows its banks and causes massive floods, claiming millions of lives throughout history, the worst of which occurred in 1931. Cultural Significance: In addition to agriculture, the river served as an important trade route and a center for the development of philosophies such as Taoism. The Yellow River Valley Civilization continued to thrive, becoming one of the four great civilizations of the ancient world and the foundation for modern Chinese culture.
The Huang He (Yellow River) Valley is the birthplace of Chinese Civilization. The Yellow River is the second largest river in China and one of the longest river systems in the world.
Huang He Valley (or in English, Yellow River Valley) was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization, and for that reason is often called "Mother River." The valley surrounds the principal river of northern China and is at the center of thousands of years of Chinese history. At over 5,400 kilometers (3,300 miles) long, the Huang He is China's second-longest river. It has a drainage basin of around 750,000 square kilometers (290,000 square miles), the third largest basin area in China. It is called the Yellow River because its waters carry silt, which give the river its yellow-brown color, and when the river overflows, it leaves a yellow residue behind. While the river helps create fertile land that is suited for farming, during certain times of the year the Huang He frequently overflows. The water damages housing and crops across the North China Plain, an important agricultural region.
Because of this, the Huang He is also nicknamed "China's Sorrow." For thousands of years, the Chinese have embarked on major public works projects to control and irrigate the water from the Huang He, including hydroelectric dams in modern times. Despite the possibility of flooding, the Huang He Valley basin is home to a huge population, and many of China's oldest cities are situated along the river.
It is hard to say exactly when villages and tribes began arising in the Huang He Valley, but most scholars agree that a major power consolidation occurred from around 2100 to 1600 B.C.E., creating the Xia Dynasty. During that time, tribal leaders came together to try to solve the problem of the Huang He overflowing and wiping out their villages and crops. Da Yu, or Yu the Great, is a mythological figure who created systems to control the floods in the Huang He Valley, and is credited as the first leader of the Xia Dynasty.
With the ability to better control the Huang He and save their crops from flooding, Chinese leaders were able to solidify their rule of China, and a number of dynasties headquartered in the region followed. The valley became the center of Chinese culture, society, and learning.
Huang He means "Yellow River." The river gets its color and its name from the extremely high volume of yellow-brown windblown silt, or loess, that enters the river in its middle reaches as it cuts through the Loess Plateau. The high silt load makes the lower reaches of the river prone to disastrous flooding. For this reason, the Huang He has been known as "China's sorrow" or the "river of tears." Flood-control and irrigation works have been built along the river for centuries, and dams, begun in the mid-1950s, also produce hydroelectricity.
One of the world's longest rivers, the Huang He is 3,395 miles (5,464 kilometers) long. It drains an area of some 290,000 square miles (750,000 square kilometers). The course of the river can be divided into two distinct sections—the mountainous upper reaches and the plains portion, which is often subdivided into the middle and lower basins. The headwaters of the river lie in western China, in the Kunlun Mountains of Qinghai province.
The middle basin includes the course of the river through the Ordos Desert and the Loess Plateau. It forms a great bend, flowing first to the northeast, then to the east and south. In this section the Fen River and the Wei River, the most important tributary, join the Huang He. The river then turns sharply east.
The lower basin, beginning in northern Henan province, encompasses the great North China Plain, which extends to the sea, interrupted only by the hills of Shandong province. The plain has been farmed and densely populated for thousands of years. The marshy delta begins about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the river's mouth on the Bo Hai, a gulf of the Yellow Sea. Over the centuries, the mouth of the river has moved many times, to points as much as 500 miles (800 kilometers) to the north and south of the Shandong peninsula.
Central to all problems of the river's shifting course, flooding, and water management is its great load of silt. The river has the highest silt load of any major river in the world, with every cubic foot of water carrying more than 2 pounds (0.9 kilogram) of silt. Some of the silt settles to the bottom and gradually builds up the riverbed. In some places the riverbed is far higher than the surrounding plains, which can cause the river to flood or to shift its course to lower land.
The system of levees that now lines virtually all of the lower reaches of the river was begun prior to the 6th century bc. Levees are mounds or ridges built along the edges of a river to prevent flooding. Unfortunately, on the Huang He the long-term effect is only to delay flooding. By constraining the channel, over time the levees cause silt deposits to raise the riverbed more and more. When a levee is breached or overtopped, the floodwater can inundate thousands of square miles of low-lying farmland and bring ruin on the inhabitants.
In China's history extensive flooding has occurred countless times, and several of the most terrible floods, with their ensuing famines, have been responsible for the deaths of more than a million persons at a time. After the southern levee of the river failed in Hunan province in 1887, more than two million people died from drowning, starvation, or the epidemics that followed. Modern flood-control programs on the river include not only improved levees but also dams and projects to reduce erosion on the Loess Plateau—and thus the amount of silt the river picks up.
The high silt load of the Huang He has also limited the utility of the water for navigation, power generation, urban consumption, and industry. In the early 21st century a massive construction project began diverting water from the Yangtze to the North China Plain. This extremely expensive and ambitious project was developed because the water available to this growing urban-industrial region from the Huang He system had fallen far short of demand.
Following Yu the Great, almost every emperor or king in the history of China tried to tame the Yellow River. Chairman Mao was no exception. As a result of his obsession with taming the river, the 350-foot-tall (107-meter-tall) Sanmenxia Dam was constructed in the 1950s. Though it provided electricity to the surrounding population, it forced people to leave homes where their families had settled for many generations. In addition, because of a shocking lack of foresight about how much sediment would end up in the river, the dam caused floods that ruined many lives.
In 2000, the then-largest hydroelectric plant on the Yellow River was superseded by another megastructure in Xiaolangdi. Its reservoir extends over 105 square miles (272 square kilometers). The Chinese government had planned to build more dams by 2030, adding to the twenty major dams already interrupting the Yellow River.
Pollution and New Plans
In addition to flooding and drought, the water quality of the Yellow River is a serious concern. Annually, more than 4 billion tons (3.6 billion metric tons) of wastewater, which accounts for 10 percent of the river's volume, is dumped directly into the Yellow River. The untreated wastewater has led one-third of the river's native fish species to extinction and made long distances of the river unsuitable even for irrigation. It is estimated that 50 percent of the Yellow River is biologically dead. Toxic water has resulted in increased cases of cancer, birth defects, and waterborne diseases along the riverbanks.
The Chinese government has realized the sacrifice it made over the years to pursue fast economic growth. Many environmental laws, rules, and regulations have been written, but the true problem is that not many rules are put into full effect at the local level. The inability of local environmental protection agencies to prevent direct waste discharge has angered many environmental activists. As a result, they form groups and hold protests. To a certain degree, their involvement does make a difference. However, considering the scope of the problems that are facing the Yellow River, their efforts are still too small to have a huge effect on properly managing the river. Moreover, even if pollution could be controlled, the gap between water demand and water supply would still be too big to fill. This gap would have to be mitigated through different ways to reduce demand, which could be detrimental to economic growth.
In the twenty-first century, the Chinese government has been dedicating significant efforts to better managing the Yellow River. In light of the large drainage areas that are eroded—166,024 square miles (430,000 square kilometers) out of 286,659 square miles (742,443 square kilometers)—solutions have been implemented to reduce deforestation, overgrazing, and overworked hillsides by planting more hardy trees and shrubs and forming more terraces along the loess plateau. For one thing, this will reduce erosion of the plateau. For another, by preventing sediment deposition in the Yellow River, the flooding problems can be cut back due to the slower rise of the riverbed.
The drought issue is even harder to handle. In the future, water resource allocation will be a huge issue because of increasing population, rising living standards, increasing pressure of expanding agricultural areas, developing industries in the basin, and global climate change, which will tend to both cause more drought and precipitate more violent storm and flooding events. This issue may seem to belong to China only. But, in reality, its effect extends beyond this country, with international consequences in the trade of industrial products and food, as well as other activities.