Introduction
"China's Sorrow". Huang He. Ma-ch'ü. "The Ungovernable". Hwang Ho. These are all references to the same thing: the Yellow River of China. The river earned its epithets "China's Sorrow" and "The Ungovernable" due to its periodic and generally catastrophic flooding. Flooding is a problem that the Yellow River has caused throughout Chinese history.
Geography
To be able to understand the problem of the river's flooding, the geography of the river and its basin must be known. The Huang is the second longest river in China, at 4830 km (3000 mi). It flows eastward, with many meanders, from the highlands of Tibet to the Yellow Sea. The river has a drainage area of more than 750,000 square km (290,000 sq mi). This area encompasses nearly 50 million acres of farmland and over 100 million people. (Grolier)
The Huang can be divided into three geographical sections. The upper basin of the river is very mountainous. The middle course is on the loess plateau and the lower is on a plain / floodplain.
The origin of the Huang is in the Pa-yen-k'a-la Mountains of the eastern Plateau of Tibet. The first 725 miles of the river are in the upper basin, which covers an area of about 48,000 square miles. In this territory, the river has eroded a deep path for itself, with the highlands often 1000 to 1700 feet above the river. It follows the southern slopes of the A-ni-ma-ch'ing Mountains, where its fall increases to a point more than 2 m/km (10 f/mi). It leaves the Plateau of Tibet near the city of Lan'Chou, marking the end of the upper Huang.
After passing Lan'Chou, the Huang makes a great loop to the north. Here is where the river first enters the loess plateau. It flows northeast through Kansu province and the sandy soils there before turning eastward and flowing through alluvial plains of Inner Mongolia. In this length of the river it branches into many channels and falls less than half a foot per mile. Then it turns fully to the south and runs for about 445 miles, forming the border of Shansi and Shensi provinces. Along this border, the river is narrow (150-200 ft) and has eroded gorges 100-200 feet in height. These gorges are carved from loess (huang-tu) soil, "a loosely compacted fine yellow silt" (Smil 72) made up of wind-deposited clay and vegetable particles which can be up to 500 feet deep in some places (ave. 160-200 ft). Loess is some of the most fertile soil in the world and is highly erodable. This loess plateau is where the Huang picks up almost all of its silt load : in Lan'Chou, before traveling through the loess region, the water has a maximum silt load of 3 kg/m3; in T'ung-kuan, after leaving the plateau, it has a maximum load of 580 kg/m3. (Smil 72) It is near the end of the south-flowing stretch that it meets up with the Fen River and then the Wei River, which are the Huang's two longest tributaries. At the point where the Wei combines with the Huang, the loop is done. The Huang leaves the loesslands and continues its flow easterly for 300 more miles through the eastern Tsinling Mountains. The length of the river from its origin to this point, the end of the middle basin, is about 2220 miles. (Britannica)
The lower course of the river broadens out across the North China Plain:
The plain is a great, nearly featureless alluvial fan broken only by the low hills of central Shantung province; it was formed over some 25 million years as the Huang Ho and other rivers deposited enormous quantities of silt, sand, and gravel into the shallow sea that once covered the region. The plain has been densely inhabited for millennia and long has been one of China's principal agricultural regions. The river has changed its bed a number of times over the plain, and extensive systems of levees and irrigation works have been built. The area illustrates perhaps better than any other place on Earth how human activity has combined with natural forces to shape the landscape. (Britannica)
The lower Huang has an average fall of 1/4 foot per mile over its 435 mile stretch across the North China Plain. The river in this region flows above the level of the surrounding countryside -- up to six to seven meters above -- due to the raising of the bed from deposition of silt picked up in the middle basin. The delta of the Huang begins approximately 50 miles from its mouth. (Britannica) The Huang delta is the most rapidly growing river delta in the world, with an average growth rate of 2 km per year (1.2 mi / yr.). (Grolier)
Land Use
Land use varies widely among the three basins of the Huang. In the upper basin, the landscape is mountainous, cold, and not favorable to agriculture. The herding of animals is a profession for a large percent of the population. The middle course flows around the Ordos basin through generally arid regions. The river branches into numerous channels in the north of the middle course, and many of these are utilized for irrigated agriculture. On the Shensi / Shansi border, people terrace the hilly terrain and farm there, on the rich loess soil. Then, when the river enters the lower basin, land use rockets as the prime agricultural region is reached. In the North China Plain, the river has built itself up from ground level to a height that can approach seven meters. The flooding occurs when the river becomes silted up and overflows or breaks its banks. Ironically, this is nearly always a disastrous occurrence, but the loess silt left across the plain makes the land very fertile afterwards. Without the loess covering, the generally alkaline soil of the plain would not be good agricultural land. The fertility of the plain is very important – it produces a great deal of food for China – but it is the flooding that causes the fertility that is the major problem people have with the river.
Flooding and Water Management
The Huang river frequently floods. In recorded history since the 3rd millennium BC, the Huang has breached its dikes more than 1500 times. In the same period, the river has changed course 26 times, with 9 of those being major course changes. (Grolier) In many of these floods, thousands of people were killed. In 1887, the flooding covered thousands of square miles and completely buried many villages under silt. In 1889, another flood destroyed 1500 villages. The next major flood, in 1921, annihilated hundreds of towns and villages, mostly near the mouth of the river. 1933's flood killed over 18,000 people and drowned over 3000 populated places. In 1939, the levees were intentionally broken in an attempt to stop Japanese invaders – the river at that time flooded an incredible area and the floodwaters took 900,000 lives. (Britannica)
Obviously, there was a problem for the people living on the North China Plain. This cycle of flooding and death could not continue. People either had to stop living on the plain or a solution had to be found. As is typical for humans, they did not leave – instead, in the mid-1950s, a multipurpose plan for permanent control of the river was initiated. This plan included the construction of over 40 dams and projects to moderate the river's flow and produce energy. The most important of these projects was the San-men Gorge Dam.
The dam, in western Honan province where the Huang leaves its middle basin, was begun in 1955 and completed on December 20, 1974. It is an enormous dam, 295 feet high. It has formed a reservoir of 1350 square miles, reaching up the Huang to the Shansi region. (Greer) The dam acts as a flood-control, silt-retention and water-storage project and feeds a hydroelectric station. It does its job of silt-retention well; almost all of the silt load of the river is deposited in the new lake (which will probably silt up sometime before 2050). The regulation of the river's flow has virtually eliminated the terrible, destructive floods that regularly submerged the North China Plain.
Another important structure is the Liu-Chia Gorge Dam. The hydroelectric power station at this location is the largest in China and produces over 1000 MW of electricity per year. The Liu-Chia is located where the Huang enters its middle basin.
Because of these projects, and especially because of the San-men Gorge Dam, there have been no major floods on the Huang since the mid-1970's. China's "Ungovernable" has been successfully harnessed.
The Ungovernable, Governed?
The technology and skills of modern man have harnessed the Huang, much as that same skill has harnessed other rivers worldwide. In most cases, the river is harmed irrevocably by this. In the case of the Huang, however, things are different.
All of the structures built on the Huang are basically temporary structures. The most long-lasting are the ones that lie before the loess region, as they will not clog with silt as the San-men and others will. The dams and projects have not changed the course of the Huang – indeed, they have prevented any major change of course.
The river itself has not been appreciably changed or destroyed by these structures. Navigation on the river is now possible year-round instead of only during the summer season. The river's little wildlife has not been destroyed. The only possible detriment is the lack of flooding. Obviously this is not wholly detrimental, but it is the silt that makes the North China Plain so fertile. Without the regular spreading of this silt, the plain will produce less food. Benefits of these projects include the control of floods, year-round navigation, electric generation, and general water management ability.
Conclusion
The Huang is an obvious choice for several large-scale projects. The river has been "tamed" by the installation of dams and structures, yet has not been appreciably harmed. It has been altered (new lakes), but these alterations are not detrimental to the river and are good for the Chinese people and the land surrounding the river. The Ungovernable has been governed, and no more tears need be shed for China's Sorrow.
Bibliography
Robert Carin, River Control in Communist China. 1962: Union Research Institute, Hong Kong.
Ernst Diez, The Ancient Worlds of Asia: From Mesopotamia to the Yellow River. 1961: Macdonald and Co. Publishers Ltd., London.
Charles Greer, Water Management in the Yellow River Basin of China. 1979: University of Texas Press, Austin.
Kosinski, Sewell, Chuanjun, eds., Land and Water Management: Chinese and Canadian Perspectives. 1988: University of Alberta, Edmonton.
Vaclav Smil, China's Energy: Achievements, Problems, Prospects. 1976: Praeger Publishers, New York.
Along the Yellow River. 1975: Foreign Languages Press, Peking.
Brittanica Online. http://www.eb.com/ 1995.
Grolier's Encyclopedia, CD-ROM version. 1995: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.