Yellow River (黄河, Huang He) . With its 50 tributaries and 4,850 kilometers from its origins in the Tibetan Plateau to its mouth in the Bohai Gulf , it is a powerful being, capable of supplying water to fifteen percent of the agricultural land in all of China .
It is not in vain that its inhabitants consider it the Mother of China, a mother who could be fertile in her abundance but also devastating in her droughts and floods. It has a particular route through basins and tributaries, but also through the social and cultural reality that surrounds these great rivers.
Characteristics
It rises in central China in the Kulun Mountains ( Qinghai Province ) and is about 4,667 km long, making it the second longest river in the country. Its headwaters are formed by a series of springs and lakes (Gyaring Hu, Ngoring Hu) located in the Kulun Mountains, Qinghai Province (Ch’ing-hai or Tsinghai), south of the Gobi Desert. Initially it heads west-east, then turns sharply northwest. Near the town of Lanzhou ( Gansu Province ) it turns northeast to continue for hundreds of kilometers through the Ordos Desert until reaching the province of Inner Mongolia . From here it changes course to the east, running for about 320 km before heading south and passing through the provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi ; This stretch is the one that gives its name to the Yellow River, due to the ease with which the clay soils are eroded, which turns the water yellow. The middle course of the river carries numerous sediments also contributed by tributaries such as the Fen He and the Wei.
From Shaanxi Province the river flows east to the plains of North China, where it begins its lower course, passing through a wide channel closed by dikes (built to prevent flooding), and after a stretch in a northeasterly direction it flows into the Gulf of Laichou , in the Yellow Sea. The enormous quantity of sediment carried by this river in its lower course causes an increase in the water level, which requires the construction of increasingly higher dikes, but this does not prevent disastrous floods during periods of flooding, aggravated by the deforestation that occurs in the upper channel.
The river has followed different paths throughout history, especially in its eastern part; also due to the effect of man through the destruction by China of some dams near the city of Kaifeng , in order to prevent the invasion of Japan during the Sino-Japanese War of 1938 ; later the course was diverted again after the reconstruction of the dams.
In modern times, since 1972 when it first dried up, the river has dried up at 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. Diverted water 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 river’s annual volume flows. Peak demand for irrigation is needed between March and June. To capture excess water for use when needed, and for flood control and power generation, several dams have been built, but due to high silt load their life is expected to be limited. The proposed South-North Water Transfer Project involves several schemes to divert water from the Yangtze River, one at 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 Grand Canal route. Because of its heavy silt load the Yellow River is a stream-depositing one, that is, it deposits part of its soil-borne load on its bed in the stretches where it is flowing slowly. These deposits elevate the flowing riverbed amid natural levees in its lower reaches. If a flood occurs, the river may burst out of the levees in 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 the levees and control the floods.
History
Historically, it is the most important river in China. Numerous archaeological sites have been discovered in its basin, which demonstrate uninterrupted human presence since prehistoric times.
Around it, on the North China Plain, arose the Han civilization, the main ethnic group in the country, and later the first dynasties, whose territory would later expand towards the south.
The Yellow River is at the origin of the names of the Chinese provinces of Hebei and Henan, which literally mean ‘North of the River’ and ‘South of the River’ respectively.
For the Chinese, the Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization, a spiritual home, so to speak. For centuries, the waters of the Yellow River have appeared in poems, stories and legends, paintings, carvings and mythology. That is why it is not an ordinary river; for the Chinese, its waters are the spirit of the nation.
There are three cultural figures associated with him: on the one hand, Suiren-shi, who is said to have taught the Chinese how to make fire from dry wood; on the other, Fu Hsi, the inventor of hunting and fishing; and finally, Shennong-shi, the inventor of agriculture. Three legendary figures on the banks of the Yellow River who gave rise to the great Chinese civilization.
Explanation of its name
This is due to the large amount of suspended materials carried by its turbulent waters, mud and loess – very fine sand particles, predominantly quartz – which give it its characteristic colour, in addition to the suspended particles that come from the multitude of corn crops around the riverbed along hundreds of kilometres in its middle course.
