Yangtze
Yangtze or Yangzi (English: /ˈjæŋtsi/ or /ˈjɑːŋtsi/)[a] is the longest river in Eurasia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows 6,300 km (3,915 mi) in a generally easterly direction to the East China Sea.[8] It is the fifth-largest primary river by discharge volume in the world. Its drainage basin comprises one-fifth of the land area of China, and is home to nearly one-third of the country's population.[9]
For other uses, see Long River (disambiguation), Yangzi (disambiguation), and Changjiang (disambiguation).
Yangtze River
长江
Cháng Jiāng (Chinese)
Tanggula Mountains, Qinghai
5,170 m (16,960 ft)
Chuma'er River
Muluwusu River
Bi Qu
6,300 km (3,900 mi)[1]
1,808,500 km2 (698,300 sq mi)[2]
30,146 m3/s (1,064,600 cu ft/s)[3]
2,000 m3/s (71,000 cu ft/s)
Datong hydrometric station, Anhui (Uppermost boundary of the ocean tide)
(Period: 1980–2020)711.1 km3/a (22,530 m3/s)[6]
(Period: 1980–2020)428.7 km3/a (13,580 m3/s)[6]
长江
長江
long river
Cháng Jiāng
Cháng Jiāng
Charng Jiang
Ch'ang2 Chiang1
Zan入 Kaon平
dɒŋ13kiɒŋ44
Chèuhng Gōng
Coeng4 Gong1
Tiông Kang
ɖjang kæwng
*Cə-[N]-traŋ kˤroŋ
扬子江
揚子江
Yang-tzu Chiang
Yang入 Tse平 Kaon平
jɒŋ13tsɯ31kiɒŋ44
Joeng4-zi2 Gong1
འབྲི་ཆུ་
'Bri Chu
'Bri Chu
Dri Chu
The Yangtze has played a major role in the history, culture, and economy of China. For thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking, and war. The prosperous Yangtze Delta generates as much as 20% of China's GDP. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world that is in use.[10][11] 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.[12]
The Yangtze flows through a wide array of ecosystems and is habitat to several endemic and threatened species including the Chinese alligator, the narrow-ridged finless porpoise, and also was the home of the now extinct Yangtze river dolphin (or baiji) and Chinese paddlefish, as well as the Yangtze sturgeon, which is extinct in the wild. In recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, plastic pollution,[13] agricultural runoff, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves. A stretch of the upstream Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Etymology[edit]
Chinese[edit]
Cháng Jiāng (长江; 長江) or "Long River" is the official name for the Yangtze in Mandarin Chinese. However, the Chinese have given different names to the upstream sections of the river up to its confluence with the Min River at Yibin, Sichuan.[14][15] Jinsha River ("Gold Sands River") refers to the 2,308 km (1,434 mi) of the Yangtze from Yibin upstream to the confluence with the Batang River near Yushu in Qinghai, while the Tongtian River ("River that leads to Heaven") describes the 813 km (505 mi) section from Yushu up to the confluence of the Tuotuo River and the Dangqu River.
In Old Chinese, the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江,[16] a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工 (now pronounced gōng, but *kˤoŋ in Old Chinese[17]). Kong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue. Similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning "river", it is related to modern Vietnamese sông (river) and Khmer krung (city on riverside), whence Thai krung (กรุง capital city), not kôngkea (water) which is from the Sanskrit root gáṅgā.[18]
The Tuotuo River, a headwater stream of the Yangtze River, known in Tibetan as Maqu, or the "Red River"
The first turn of the Yangtze at Shigu (石鼓) in Yunnan, where the river turns 180 degrees from southbound to northbound
Qutang Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
Xiling Gorge, one of the Three Gorges
![Golden Island on the Yangtze near Zhenjiang in Jiangsu, as it was in the mid-19th century[50]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Golden_Island%2C_on_The_Yang-Tse_River%2C_China_%28LMS%2C_1869%2C_p.64%29.jpg/221px-Golden_Island%2C_on_The_Yang-Tse_River%2C_China_%28LMS%2C_1869%2C_p.64%29.jpg)
History[edit]
Geologic history[edit]
Although the mouth of the Yellow River has fluctuated widely north and south of the Shandong peninsula within the historical record, the Yangtze has remained largely static. Based on studies of sedimentation rates, however, it is unlikely that the present discharge site predates the late Miocene (c. 11 Ma).[51] Prior to this, its headwaters drained south into the Gulf of Tonkin along or near the course of the present Red River.[52]
The Yichang Yangtze Highway Bridge, a suspension bridge near the Gezhouba Dam lock, was completed in 1996.
The Sutong Yangtze River Bridge, between Nantong and Suzhou, was one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world when it was completed in 2008.
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 (October 15, 1945).
The river stood as a major geographic barrier dividing northern and southern China. In the first half of the 20th century, rail passengers from Beijing to Guangzhou and Shanghai had to disembark, respectively, at Hanyang and Pukou, and cross the river by steam ferry before resuming journeys by train from Wuchang or Nanjing West.
After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Soviet engineers assisted in the design and construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, 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, in Nanjing. It was built after the Sino-Soviet Split and did not receive foreign assistance. Road-rail bridges were then built in Zhicheng (1971) and Chongqing (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: Jiangyin Suspension Bridge (1,385 m, opened in 1999), Runyang Bridge (1,490 m, opened 2005), Sutong Bridge (1,088 m, opened 2008). The rapid pace of bridge construction has continued. The city of Wuhan now has six bridges and one tunnel across the Yangtze.
A number of power line crossings have also been built across the river.
The Yangtze River has over 700 tributaries. The major tributaries (listed from upstream to downstream) with the locations of where they join the Yangtze are:
The Huai River flowed into the Yellow Sea until the 20th century, but now primarily discharges into the Yangtze.
Tourism[edit]
The Yangtze River cruise, also called the "Three Gorges cruise", is a popular tourist attraction.
