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Huang He

River in China; length 5,464 km/3,395 mi. Rising in Qinghai province in the west of the country, it winds eastwards to the Bohai Gulf on the Yellow Sea. The names ‘Yellow River’ and ‘Yellow Sea’ derive from the great quantities of fine yellow particles of the soil known as loess (originally wind-blown from central Asia) which the river carries. The deposition of this material helps to explain why the river is sometimes known as ‘China's sorrow’ because of disastrous floods. Flooding is now largely controlled through hydroelectric works, dykes, and embankments, but the barriers are ceasing to work because loess deposited as silt continues to raise the river bed.

History

Before 1852 the Huang He flowed into the Yellow Sea south of the Shandong Peninsula, but in that year the course shifted north and the river emptied into the Bohai Gulf. In 1938 Chinese nationalist forces breached the dykes on the south bank near Kaifeng in an attempt to halt the Japanese advance, flooding some 54,000 sq km/21,000 sq mi in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu, and forcing 3 million people to leave home. The Chinese rebuilt the dykes between 1946 and 1947, and diverted the river to its former course.

Course The Huang He is the second longest river in China after the Chang Jiang. The river rises in the Amne Machin Shan, part of the Kunlun Shan range, in Qinghai province south of the Gobi Desert. It runs eastwards, following a tortuous course through deep gorges, before veering to the northeast at Lanzhou in Gansu province and flowing through the Ordos Desert, an easterly extension of the Gobi in Inner Mongolia. Turning sharply to the south, it separates Shaanxi from Shanxi province before running eastwards through Henan province. After flowing across the North China Plain, it empties into the Bohai Gulf.

The Huang He's chief tributaries are the Wei He joining from the west, and the Fen He from the east. Dams in the upper course are the Nongmenxia in Qinghai province, the largest hydroelectric scheme on the Huang He; and Liujiaxia, near Lanzhou in Gansu province. Lower-course dams form part of flood control schemes and include the Sanmenxia and Xiaolangdi (under construction, 2002) in Henan province. Lanzhou, Kaifeng, and Jinan are the most important cities on its banks.

Flooding The Huang He is the world's most silted river, carrying 1.6 billion tonnes of mud and sand each year; about half of this is deposited in its lower course across the North China Plain. Nearly all the silt is picked up in the middle course of the river, where it flows across thick deposits of a loamy, yellow-coloured loess in a region subject to severe rainstorms. Deforestation in this area has increased the run-off and erosion. Dykes have been built over the centuries along the lower reaches of the river to prevent flooding and stop the sediment spreading onto the plains. As a result, sediment silts up the bottom of the river, raising it by an average of about 10 cm/4 in a year. Increasingly taller dykes have been built to contain the river, lifting the river above the level of the plain up to a maximum of 21 m/70 ft in Henan, although the height decreases as the river nears the sea. When the river has broken through the dykes, the results have been disastrous. In 1931, 88,060 sq km/34,000 sq mi of land were completely flooded and 20,720 sq km/8,000 sq mi were partially flooded; 1 million people died, and about 80 million lost their homes.

Flood prevention In the 1950s, a comprehensive flood control programme, including intensive dyke building, dam construction, and reafforestation in the loess region, was initiated in an attempt to regulate water flow. Although reafforestation has not reduced the silt load, the building of dykes and the construction of the Sanmenxia Dam have prevented the Huang He from bursting its banks since 1945. Continued silting has reduced the effectiveness of these measures, but a new dam at Xiaolangdi, close to Luoyang, in the last gorge on the river before it enters the plain, will reduce the danger of flooding by controlling peak flows and holding back part of the silt. It will also release water into the river when the flow is reduced during the dry season, as increasing use of the river's water for irrigation and urban supplies has caused the river to dry up during this period. The Huang He first ran dry in 1972, and in 1997, a drought year, the lower course of the river was empty from February to August.

206 BC 2650 BC 4500 BC 884 Fen He

Gansu Henan Hwang Ho Ji'nan Lanzhou

Luoyang Mongolia, Inner Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Sage Kings Shandong

Shanxi Shenyang Yellow Emperor Yellow River More results