Modern impatience moves like a water spider, hovering on a Google instant answer for a millisecond then flitting away toward the next, new distraction. Sometimes Google, in their beneficence, lead searchers to the Elvis English Diaries to answer the question of why the Yellow River is yellow, but on this site the answer is always in the story and the story is never instant. Sadly, many click away in disgust. Yet there are some of you—yes you!—who stick around longer and for you I will not only answer the question but will also tell you why the Yellow River is the Nile of China and that the ancients believed it began in heaven as a continuation of the Milky Way. So let’s just get this out of the way real quick—the Yellow River is not yellow; it is more the color of café au lait. Like tobacco juice mixed with yoghurt. Like Van Gogh mud flaps. Like if you melted Mexico and added extra caramel. A thick soup of desert adobe. If you look at a map, the boundaries of China resemble a silhouette of a rooster. The Yellow River then, begins at the base of the country’s spine, wanders through the lungs and heart, and empties out in a gorging mud and sand tracheotomy at its throat. It is the most sediment-laden river in the world, running 3,395 miles (5,464 km), the second longest river in China, with over 30 tributaries swelling its flow, trespassing through nine provinces, and finally emptying into the Bohai Sea south of Beijing. Known as the Huang He, the Mother River, and also the River of Sorrows because of the devastating floods that have occurred with frequency. Silt builds up in the riverbed and forces the river to change course, flooding flat plains, washing away crude dwellings, tragically killing an estimated 13 million people during floods in 1332, 1887 and 1931, the largest natural catastrophe ever recorded. The river has shifted its course 26 times and flooded approximately 1,505 times. Except once when the flood was man-made. A Ming governor ordered dikes be destroyed in 1642, in an attempt to subvert peasant rebels besieging the city of Kaifeng but only succeeded in destroying his own city where plague and famine killed over 300,000 residents. What people forget, the river remembers. It remembers when there were no people, before the plates collided and the mountains rose. It watched reptiles turn into walking brutes and discover themselves. It watched them gather along its banks. It watched them try to dominate each other. It watched each dominator fail, though along the way they invented paper and gunpowder and great walls and navigation. In Chinese culture there are three revered ancient heroes: Suiren-shi who made fire by drilling wood, Fu His, who is said to be the inventor of hunting, trapping and fishing, and Shennong-shi who has been credited with establishing agriculture. All of them incited culture in the Yellow River basin that spread and enabled Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Genghis khan and others to push the Yellow River civilization to a new level of propriety, polish, and proportion. Consequently, it became the cradle of Chinese civilization, the spirit of the people and a tangible symbol of national pride. A flowing unity that knitted nine provinces together, irrigated and fed a growing population, ferried trade goods up and down, shouldered all the washing and watering, the fishing and wishing, while ushering Tibetan snowmelt down, down, down all the way to the sea. Yet those 34 kilograms of silt per meter create problems downstream. The silt collects, causing the river bed to rise and slows the flow to the lower reaches of the river. To combat this, Chinese engineers have developed a unique solution. Every year in June in China's Henan Province, they blast a stream out of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir using vented water from a hydro-power station, generating a spectacular muddy burst that washes 762 million metric tons of mud and sand out into the sea. The operation usually lasts for about twenty days and has become an annual tourist attraction. On a personal note, I’ve grown really fond of the Yellow River and have walked its banks in all seasons. Ridden on boats up and down it. Strapped myself to the Zhongshan Bridge then leaned back and photographed it. Even traveled on an ancient sheepskin raft across it. In recent years China has gone to great lengths to build walkways and bike paths along its course, yet I cannot fathom why the people abuse it so, from thoughtlessly tossing bottles and trash into it, to allowing industrial waste to be dumped into it, to be so oblivious to the stench of drains leaching into it, while people eat the fish they catch in it. Somewhere, the ancients weep, real river tears.
2 Comments
Mary
4/15/2015 07:11:35 am
EE What a very touching story. I now love the Yellow River. I didn't realize it had such history but I do remember you using your belt to take a picture I couldn't believe you did that but that is love for the picture you took it was incredible. The blasting picture is unlike anything I have seen. The rooster in so interesting and the final evening picture is spectacular!!! Great Writing!!!!
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David Bean
4/19/2024 02:26:27 pm
Oh, what a wonder is the Internet. This Marvelous article and only two comments so far.
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