Yangtze
The river begins its journey at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. This source lies at an elevation of 5,038 meters above sea level. It flows eastward for approximately 6,300 kilometers before emptying into the East China Sea near Shanghai. The name Yangtze derives from a local term used in the lower reaches of the river. In ancient Chinese texts, the waterway was simply called Jiang or Kiang. By the Han dynasty, it became known as the Great River. During the Six Dynasties period, the epithet meaning long was formally applied to distinguish it from other rivers. Various sections carried different names such as the Sichuan River and the Jing River. Europeans who arrived in the Yangtze River Delta region adopted the local name Yangzhou to describe the entire waterway. Early English maps listed the river as Kian or Kiam. By the mid-19th century, these romanizations had standardized as Kiang. A related form popularized in English was Kian-ku. The name Blue River began to be applied in the 18th century but fell out of favor due to growing awareness of its lack of connection to the river's actual Chinese names. Matteo Ricci's 1615 Latin account included descriptions of the Ianfsu and Ianfsuchian. Posthumous translations rendered the name as Fils de la Mer. By 1800, English cartographers like Aaron Arrowsmith had adopted the French style of the name as Yang-tse. The British diplomat Thomas Wade emended this to Yang-tzu Chiang based on the Beijing dialect. The spellings Yangtze and Yangtze Kiang were a compromise between two methods adopted at the 1906 Imperial Postal Conference in Shanghai. Hanyu Pinyin was adopted by the PRC's First Congress in 1958.
The river originates from several tributaries in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. Two of which are commonly referred to as the source. Traditionally, the Chinese government has recognized the source as the Tuotuo tributary at the base of a glacier lying on the west of Geladandong Mountain. This source is found at an elevation of 5,038 meters above sea level. The true source of the Yangtze, hydrologically the longest river distance from the sea, is at Jari Hill. It lies approximately 240 kilometers southeast of Geladandong. As the historical spiritual source of the Yangtze, the Geladandong source is still commonly referred to as the source since the discovery of the Jari Hill source. These tributaries join and the river then runs eastward through Qinghai. It turns southward down a deep valley at the border of Sichuan and Tibet to reach Yunnan. In the course of this valley, the river's elevation drops from over 5,000 meters to less than 100 meters. Thus, over the first 600 kilometers of its length, the river has fallen more than 4,900 meters. It enters the basin of Sichuan at Yibin. While in the Sichuan basin, it receives several large tributaries, increasing its water volume significantly. It then cuts through Mount Wushan bordering Chongqing and Hubei to create the famous Three Gorges. Eastward of the Three Gorges, Yichang is the first city on the Yangtze Plain. After entering Hubei province, the Yangtze receives water from a number of lakes. The largest of these lakes is Dongting Lake, which is located on the border of Hunan and Hubei provinces. At Wuhan, it receives its biggest tributary, the Han River. At the northern tip of Jiangxi province, Lake Poyang, the biggest freshwater lake in China, merges into the river. The river then runs through Anhui and Jiangsu, receiving more water from innumerable smaller lakes and rivers, and finally reaches the East China Sea at Shanghai. Four of China's five main freshwater lakes contribute their waters to the Yangtze River.
Human activity has been verified in the Three Gorges area as far back as 27,000 years ago. By the 5th millennium BC, the lower Yangtze was a major population center occupied by the Hemudu and Majiabang cultures. Both were among the earliest cultivators of rice. By the 3rd millennium BC, the successor Liangzhu culture showed evidence of influence from the Longshan peoples of the North China Plain. The Yue people of the lower Yangtze possessed very different traditions including blackening their teeth and cutting their hair short. They lived in small settlements among bamboo groves and were considered barbarous by the northerners. In the lower Yangtze, two Yue tribes, the Gouwu in southern Jiangsu and the Yuyue in northern Zhejiang, display increasing Zhou influence starting in the 9th century BC. Traditional accounts credit these changes to northern refugees who assumed power over the local tribes. As the kingdoms of Wu and Yue, they were famed as fishers, shipwrights, and sword-smiths. Adopting Chinese characters, political institutions, and military technology, they were among the most powerful states during the later Zhou. In the middle Yangtze, the state of Jing seems to have begun in the upper Han River valley a minor Zhou polity. It adapted to native culture as it expanded south and east into the Yangtze valley. In the process, it changed its name to Chu. Whether native or nativizing, the Yangtze states held their own against the northern Chinese homeland. Some lists credit them with three of the Spring and Autumn period's Five Hegemons and one of the Warring States' Four Lords. Chu's growing power led its rival Jin to support Wu as a counter. Wu successfully sacked Chu's capital Ying in 506 BC. But Chu subsequently supported Yue in its attacks against Wu's southern flank. In 473 BC, King Goujian of Yue fully annexed Wu and moved his court to its eponymous capital at modern Suzhou. In 333 BC, Chu finally united the lower Yangtze by annexing Yue. Qin was able to unite China by first subduing Ba and Shu on the upper Yangtze in modern Sichuan. The state of Qin conquered the central Yangtze region, the previous heartland of Chu, in 278 BC. Since the Han dynasty, the region of the Yangtze River grew ever more important to China's economy. The establishment of irrigation systems made agriculture very stable and productive. By the Song dynasty, the area along the Yangtze had become among the wealthiest and most developed parts of the country. Historically, the Yangtze was the political boundary between north China and south China several times. This occurred notably during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the Southern Song. Many battles took place along the river, the most famous being the Battle of Red Cliffs in 208 AD during the Three Kingdoms period.
Until 1957, there were no bridges across the Yangtze River from Yibin to Shanghai. For millennia, travelers crossed the river by ferry. On occasions, the crossing may have been dangerous, as evidenced by the Zhong'anlun disaster on the 15th of October 1945. After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Soviet engineers assisted in the design and construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. It was a dual-use road-rail bridge built from 1955 to 1957. It was the first bridge across the Yangtze River. The second bridge across the river that was built was a single-track railway bridge built upstream in Chongqing in 1959. The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, also a road-rail bridge, was the first bridge to cross the lower reaches of the Yangtze. It was built after the Sino-Soviet Split and did not receive foreign assistance. Road-rail bridges were then built in Zhicheng in 1971 and Chongqing in 1980. Bridge-building slowed in the 1980s before resuming in the 1990s and accelerating in the first decade of the 21st century. The Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge was built in 1992 as part of the Beijing-Jiujiang Railway. A second bridge in Wuhan was completed in 1995. By 2005, there were a total of 56 bridges and one tunnel across the Yangtze River between Yibin and Shanghai. These include some of the longest suspension and cable-stayed bridges in the world on the Yangtze Delta. The Jiangyin Suspension Bridge opened in 1999 with a span of 1,385 meters. The Runyang Bridge opened in 2005 with a span of 1,490 meters. The Sutong Bridge opened in 2008 with a span of 1,088 meters. As of 2007, there are two dams built on the Yangtze River: Three Gorges Dam and Gezhouba Dam. The Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station in the world by installed capacity at 22.5 GW. Several dams are operating or are being constructed on the upper portion of the river, the Jinsha River. Among them, the Baihetan Dam is the second largest after the Three Gorges Dam. The Xiluodu Dam is the 4th largest power station in the world. In mid-2014, the Chinese government announced it was building a multi-tier transport network comprising railways, roads and airports to create a new economic belt alongside the river.
The Yangtze River has high species richness including many endemics. A high percentage of these are seriously threatened by human activities. About 416 fish species are known from the Yangtze basin including 362 that strictly are freshwater species. Many are only found in some section of the river basin. The headwaters where the average altitude is over 4,000 meters are home to 14 highly specialized species but 8 of these are endemic to the river. Many Yangtze fish species have declined drastically and 65 were recognized as threatened in the 2009 Chinese red list. Among these are three that are considered entirely extinct: Chinese paddlefish, Anabarilius liui liui and Atrilinea macrolepis. Two are extinct in the wild: Anabarilius polylepis and Schizothorax parvus. Four are critically endangered: Euchiloglanis kishinouyei, Megalobrama elongata, Schizothorax longibarbus and Leiocassis longibarbus. In December 2006, the Yangtze river dolphin was declared functionally extinct after an extensive search of the river revealed no signs of the dolphin's inhabitance. Surveys conducted between 2006 and 2008 by ichthyologists failed to catch any. The last definite record was an individual that was accidentally captured near Yibin in 2003 and released after having been radio tagged. In 2010, the Yangtze population of finless porpoise was 1000 individuals. Due to commercial use of the river, tourism, and pollution, the Yangtze is home to several seriously threatened species of large animals including the narrow-ridged finless porpoise, baiji, Chinese alligator, Yangtze giant softshell turtle and Chinese giant salamander. Beginning in the 1950s, dams and dikes were built for flood control, land reclamation, irrigation, and control of diseases vectors such as blood flukes that caused Schistosomiasis. More than a hundred lakes were thusly cut off from the main river. Natural fisheries output in the two lakes declined sharply. Only a few large lakes, such as Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake, remained connected to the Yangtze. Cutting off the other lakes that had served as natural buffers for floods increased the damage done by floods further downstream. Furthermore, the natural flow of migratory fish was obstructed and biodiversity across the whole basin decreased dramatically. Intensive farming of fish in ponds spread using one type of carp who thrived in eutrophic water conditions and who feeds on algae causing widespread pollution. The pollution was exacerbated by the discharge of waste from pig farms as well as of untreated industrial and municipal sewage. In September 2012, the Yangtze river near Chongqing turned red from pollution. The erection of the Three Gorges Dam has created an impassable iron barrier that has led to a great reduction in the biodiversity of the river. In 2020, a sweeping law was passed by the Chinese government to protect the ecology of the river. The new laws include strengthening ecological protection rules for hydropower projects along the river, banning chemical plants within 1 kilometer of the river, relocating polluting industries, severely restricting sand mining as well as a complete fishing ban on all the natural waterways of the river including all its major tributaries and lakes.
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Common questions
Where does the Yangtze River begin and at what elevation?
The river begins its journey at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. This source lies at an elevation of 5,038 meters above sea level.
How long is the Yangtze River and where does it end?
It flows eastward for approximately 6,300 kilometers before emptying into the East China Sea near Shanghai. The name Yangtze derives from a local term used in the lower reaches of the river.
When was the first bridge built across the Yangtze River?
The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge was built from 1955 to 1957 as the first bridge across the Yangtze River. It was a dual-use road-rail bridge constructed with assistance from Soviet engineers after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
Which species are considered extinct or functionally extinct in the Yangtze River basin?
About 416 fish species are known from the Yangtze basin including three that are considered entirely extinct: Chinese paddlefish, Anabarilius liui liui and Atrilinea macrolepis. In December 2006, the Yangtze river dolphin was declared functionally extinct after an extensive search revealed no signs of its inhabitance.
What major ecological law did the Chinese government pass regarding the Yangtze River in 2020?
In 2020, a sweeping law was passed by the Chinese government to protect the ecology of the river. The new laws include strengthening ecological protection rules for hydropower projects along the river, banning chemical plants within 1 kilometer of the river, and implementing a complete fishing ban on all natural waterways.