The second largest river in China

Yellow River (which means "Yellow River") is the second largest river in China.
When is the opening of locks, from the reservoir have an enormous flow of water and sand.
Thus the flow of the river is cleared of silt, which prevents local flooding.
A very impressive sight.




Water flows at an incredible rate: 2,600 cubic meters per second.



Translated from the Chinese by its name - "Yellow River", due to the abundance of sediment, giving it a yellowish tint waters. It is thanks to them that the sea, into which flows the river, known as yellow.



Yellow River. View from space:



Yellow River originates in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of 4000 meters.



In order to protect against flooding of the Yellow River and its tributaries are protected large-scale system of dams, the total length of about 5000 km. Dam led to huge floods and displacement channel. This resulted in a great loss of life and the river gave the nickname "Woe to China».



Pool "Yellow River" provides about 140 million people with drinking water and water for irrigation.



From 602 BC. e. to this day registered 26 changes the channel of the Yellow River and the 1573 dam.



Hukou Waterfall on the border of Shaanxi and Shanxi:



A record annual rate of removal of silt Huanghe River was recorded in 1933, amounting to 3.91 billion tons.

In 1938, on the Yellow River was flooding, arranged nationalist government in central China during the first half of the Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of the Japanese troops. It was later called "the biggest environmental act of war in the history».



The flood covered and destroyed thousands of square kilometers of farmland and move the mouth of the Yellow River hundreds of miles to the south. Thousands of villages have been flooded or destroyed, and several million people were forced to leave their homes and became refugees. The official estimate of the victims of post-war nationalist Commission argues that drowned in the flood of 800,000 people, but the data may be underestimated



At 11 AD. e. Huang He made a breakthrough in a new direction, which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe - one of the factors that led to the fall of the dynasty Xin.



The maximum recorded moving bed of the Yellow River was about 800 km.



Today, the valley of "Yellow River" is densely populated. Among the towns located on its shores, the largest are Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Baotou, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Jinan. (Photo by Chris Bryant):



Source: loveopium.ru