Yangtze River
From ArticleWorld
The Yangtze River is the third longest river in the world. The first two are The Amazon River and the Nile River. Chang Jiang is the new name assigned to Yangtze River. It is a commercially important river. It divides China in to north and south parts. The other names of Yangtze River are
- Yangtze Kiang
- Dangqu
- Tuotuo
- Togtian
- Jinsha
- Vbri Chu
- Golden Waterway.
The river is used for commercial transport purposes. Flooding is a major problem especially during the heavy rainy season of May to August due to which there are heavy causalities of life. The most disastrous one was in 1931 which killed 142,000 people.
==Origin and course==The Yangtze River is 6,380 km long. It arises in the Tibet Plateau on its Dangla Mountains. It flows eastwards through Qinghai province. Then it turns south to flow between Sichuan and Tibet It then passes through Mountain Wu where it forms the three gorges. On the way near Hubei it gets tributaries from hundreds of lakes of which Dongting is the biggest one. It drains in to the East China Sea at Shanghai. The endangered species like Chinese River Dolphin, Chinese Paddlefish and Chinese Alligator are found in this river.
The Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam is the largest irrigation project in the world. Though it benefited a section of people by providing water, electricity and protection from floods, there are people who say that it causes increased incidence of floods in the upper reaches of the river.
Historical aspects
Human existence in the region of the Three Gorges is said have been found even 2 million years ago.The Ba and Shu located in the Upper reaches.Chu occupied the central region. Wu and Yue occupied the lower reaches. The Dujiangyan irrigation system built 2000 years ago is still in good shape. The river divided China into north and south parts and lots of battles happened in that area. Nanjing found on its bank was the Capital for a number of times.
Tributaries
- Minjiang River
- Daduhe River
- Tuojiang River
- Jialing River
- Wujiang River
- Xiangjiang River
- Han River
- Ganjiang River
- Huangpu River
- Ya-Lung River