The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in China (after the Yangtze River) and the sixth-longest in the world at 5,464 kilometers(3,398 miles). Originating in the Bayankala Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China, it flows through nine provinces of China (Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan,Shandong Provinces) and empties into the Bohai Sea. The Yellow River basin has an east-west extent of 1900 km (1,180 miles) and a north-south extent of 1100 km (684 miles). Total basin area is 752,443 km2 (290,520 mile2).
The headwaters of this mighty river lie in Kunlun Mountains in northwestern Qinghai Province. It runs through nine provinces and autonomous regions on its way to the Bohai Sea. It is not exaggerating to say that Yellow River is a melting port, because there are more than 30 branches and countless streams feeding it through its course. The vigorous upper reaches of the Yellow River starts in Qinghai Province to Hekouzhen in Inner Mongolia. This magnificent river flows quietly, like a shy girl in this section, irrigating the farmlands and nurturing the people. Its middle reaches ends at Taohuayu in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. Here the Yellow River splits the Loess Plateau in half, forming the longest continuous gorge in the whole drainage area of the river. The Yellow River's lower reaches ends in a delta on the Bohai Sea.
It is agreed upon by almost all the Chinese people that the Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization, the spiritual home of the Chinese people. It is the waters of the Yellow River and its spirit that nurture the whole Chinese nation. For thousands of years, the Yellow River has been admiring by literary giants, artists, as well as by the common people. The Yellow River is not just several letters, nor is it just the name of a yellow-ochre-colored river. It bears special significance: the symbol of the Chinese nation, the spirit of the Chinese people and more importantly, civilization itself.
Neolithic (7,000 BC-3,700 BC), Bronze (3,700 BC-2,700 BC) and Iron Age Sites (770 BC), and so on can be found in the Yellow River's drainage basin, which had been the center of ancient Chinese culture since the Azilian (Middle Stone Age). Here, the story of three cultural heroes: Suiren-shi who taught the Chinese to make fire by drilling wood, Fu Hsi who was the inventor of hunting, trapping and fishing and Shennong-shi who invented agriculture, was spread. It was these three legendary individuals that began the development of civilization in the Yellow River basin. After that, many ancient Chinese emperors, like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Genghis khan (1162-1227, grandfather of Kublai Khan who is the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368)) pushed the Yellow River civilization to a wholly new level of refinement, grace and spirituality which drew the attention of the whole world.
【Introduction】On September 1, 1994, there was a 50-year hyperconcentrated flood event of Beiluo River, tributary of Yellow River at its middle reach in northern China. Flow discharge is around 6,280 m3/s, sediment concentration is 690 kg/m3. Total sediment in 4 days of this event is almost 0.136 billion tons, and total water volume is 2.04 billion m3. This video shows the flood water passing through Daja County, Shannxi Province, China. The flood almost reached the roof of a building here.
【Enjoy】A song "Life of the Yellow River", lyrics by Yiping Chao and the music by Xiaolu Wang. This is a song about keeping the healthy life of the Yellow River, and it has received many awards in China. You can also enjoy the beautiful scenery of the lower Yellow River.
【Lyrics in English】Pentium endless torrents, are your pounding pulse. Traveling through eternal time and space, are the green waves on both banks. Ah, Yellow River, my dear mother, coming along with grand songs, you cast a flow of history. Ah, take care of our mother river and dress her up, we will enjoy the sunshine and green with you together. Ah, love our mother river and repay her, we will sing the hymn of life with you together.
River course changing and levee breaching so many times, should not be your characteristics. River bed running dry again and again, is your silent whispers. Ah, Yellow River, my dear mother, keeping the healthy life of you, is our responsibility as your daughters and sons. Ah, take care of our mother river and dress her up, we will enjoy the sunshine and green with you together. Ah, love our mother river and repay her, we will sing the hymn of life with you together.
【Introduction】On September 1, 1994, there was a 50-year hyperconcentrated flood event of Beiluo River, a tributary of Yellow River at its middle reach in northern China. Flow discharge is around 6,280 m3/s, sediment concentration is 690 kg/m3. Total sediment in 4 days of this event is almost 0.136 billion tons, and total water volume is 2.04 billion m3. This video shows the flood passed through a bridge at Baishui County of the upper reach of Beiluo River. It is really amazing that the bridge can sustain such a huge flood event with a large amount of sediment!
This is a story about how the knowledge of fluid mechanics was first used for the real life problems in ancient China....Let me know your solution to this problem in the end!!!
More than 1000 years ago, there once was a child called Chong Chao, a very clever boy beloved by his father, CaoCao, the prime minister in feudal China of the Kingdom Wei.
One day, his father was presented an elephant by the southern envoy. It was such a tall and large animal that nobody had ever seen at that time in Northern China. A question suddenly came into the father’s mind: how much does the elephant weigh? The understrappers, accordingly, assigned dozens of soldiers to build a huge steelyard with a big plate, where the elephant can be placed and weighed. However, the elephant is so heavy that wooden weigh-beam can not sustain its weight and cracked. Someone suggested to kill the elephant, cut him into pieces, and weigh each part individually, but the elephant will not be alive. No one can work out of any good idea to weigh an alive elephant.
Right at this moment, seven-year-old Chong jumped out and said to his father: "I can weigh it." The surprised father smiled: "You are only a little boy, what is your opinion? " Chong winked naughtily: “follow me, and just do what I required”, then ran onwards to the lake of the palace. Those adults who saw that all shaked their heads, and thought it was just a little joke. But his father Cao abandoned his dubitation, he called others to follow the little son to the lake to see how the elephant would be weighed.
Dear blog reader, could you let me know how the elephant was weighed by Chong? Leave your message, thanks! Hint: Lake...
【Introduction】As the sixth longest river in the world, the Yellow River and its basin have been associated with China's prosperity for thousands of years. In recent decades, rapid economic development has increased the river's pollution and sediment levels, posing major challenges in managing its water for agriculture, industry, power generation and domestic uses. A new study shows that climate change can reduce the volume of water, add pressure on all sectors to share water more efficiently and carefully. The same imperative of integrated river basin management applies to other river basins across China and Mongolia in northeast Asia.
This film captures the highlights of a 2008 study, Vulnerability Assessment of Freshwater Resources to Environmental Change, carried out by researchers in China and Mongolia for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
(1) Water consumption exceeds the bearing capacity of the Yellow River, and the water shortage is very severe.
The mean runoff is 58 billion m3. With the development of economy and society, water consumption will increase constantly. Water consumption in life and production rises from 12 billion m3 in the 1950s to 30.7 billion m3 now (other regions out of the basin consume 10.6 billion m3). This causes a serious problem of zero-flow in the lower stream. In the past 27 years from 1972 to 1998, zero-flow occurred in 21years with a total duration of 1051 days. Every year from 1990 to 1998, zero-flow occurred and the lasted time was longer and longer, so was the length of the river reach. In 1997, the situation was the most serious. Lijin cross-section, nearest to the estuary had zero-flow for 226 days in a year, the zero-flow section extended upward even to Kaifeng City in Henan Province. Frequent zero-flow and less water flowing into the sea cause the aggravation of the contradiction between supply and demand and the deterioration of ecological environment and water-pollution. These extremely threaten swamps in the estuary and the ecological diversity, increase the channel deposit, weaken the discharge capacity and burden the flood-control.
After the unified dispatch of water in the trunk in 1999, zero-flow has been lessened. But, because of water shortage in this zone and the weak supervision system in the basin, an authoritative, effective and harmonious supervision system has not been formed, and the management is still weak. There are neither essential laws or policies nor economic means for unified regulation. So water shortage and zero-flow can not be settled thoroughly.
(2) With the development of economy and society, the gap between supply and demand of water is even more serious.
It is estimated that in 2010, considering water saving, the total water consumption in the basin and the neighboring areas will increase to 52 billion m3. Considering sand transport in the down stream in flood season and the minimum ecological flow in other seasons, the Yellow River Basin can provide a maximum water volume of 48 billion m3 in normal years (including 11 billion m3 ground water), with a gap of 4 billion m3. In moderately dry year, water shortage will reach 10 billion m3. Water shortage has been a basic restricting factor of the sustainable development of economy and society in the Yellow River Basin and the pertinent areas.
The loss of water and soil and the deterioration of water environment not yet controlled effectively.
(1) Water and soil losses have not been controlled effectively.
There are some conspicuous problems in the harnessing of water and soil losses:
Firstly, for a long time, the investment is extremely deficient with slow progress of harnessing. The existing standards are fairly low without corollary equipment, and the survival rate of trees and grass is very low.
Secondly, the harnessing in some areas which have more sand and coarse sand, is extremely lagging and the gully works and dam works are few. The Loess Plateau is a chief sand-production area covering 7.86 thousand square kilometer, where the economy is very backward and the ecology is weak. Due to the lack of gully and dam works, the measures of intercepting and reducing sand are not so effective.
Thirdly, the prevention, supervision and management are not effective. In some areas, the phenomenon of harnessing and destroying at the same time is very common. During the mining of coal and nonferrous metal in the bordering areas of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, and Henan, Shaanxi and Shanxi, the relationship between economy and ecology has been ignored, which deteriorates the weak ecology itself. The area of forest belt in Ziwu Mountain and Liupan Mountain is decreasing year by year. With the increase of human demands from the nature, new factors leading to water and soil losses arise, and the pressure on ecology is heavier and heavier.
(2) Water pollution is more serious.
The industry in the basin is usually of low investment, high consumption and heavy pollution. There are so many enterprises which consume more water and produce more contaminations. Especially, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, paper-making, chemical plant, tan and other heavy-pollution factories developed quickly. So the pollution sources and its discharge capacity have greatly increased; at the same time the treatment of pollutant was not sound for the lack of effective supervision. Then plenty of raw effluent that could not reach the standards was drained into the river. In the early 1990s the effluent load reached 4.2 billion m3, which is twice as much as that of the early 1980s. Water quality deteriorated sharply. The Official Gazette of Chinese Environment Condition by the National Environmental Protection Bureau in 1997 showed that, compared with other rivers in China, the polluted length of the Yellow River ranked the second. Compared with the water-quality of 1985, in 2000 the length with the water-quality standards of Ⅳ, Ⅴor inferior to Ⅴ increased by 30.4%. The deterioration of water quality not only does harm to life and health of the people directly, but also aggravates water shortage greatly.
It is estimated that the pollution discharge in the whole basin will exceed 6.5 billion m3 in 2010. At the same time the pollution caused by fertilizer will spread further. If effective measures can not be taken in time, water quality in the trunk stream and tributary nearby the large or middle cities will possibly exceed the water-quality standard of Ⅴ. This will threaten the safety of water supply.
(III) Main cognitions
In the long-time of harnessing and developing of the Yellow River, through the continuous exploration of “practice-cognition-practice again”, the following cognition about the particularity and regularity of the Yellow River is deepened gradually.
1. The Yellow River has less water but more sand and is very difficult to harness. The urgency and importance of the harnessing and developing must be realized. Its protracted nature and complexity must also be completely considered.
2. All factors must be taken into consideration as a unity which can influence and restrain each other. The factors include natural conditions, ecological environment, economy and society. Great emphasis should be put on their correlation for calamity elimination and benefit generation.
3. Considering the correlation of water consumption for ecology, industry and agriculture, water-saving measures must be practiced. To realize the sustainable utilization of water resources, the optimized distribution, conservation and saving must be intensified.
4. Sediment problems are still the key. Equal attention must be paid to sand control and flood control. Water and soil conservation must be looked on as a radical measure to the harnessing.
5. To solve the problems of the Yellow River, both engineering measures and non-engineering measures, particularly the up-to-date techniques must be emphasized.
6. Guided by the theory of socialist market economy, the harnessing and developing of the Yellow River must esteem the laws of nature and economy.
