2015 China

26 April, Xiahe to Lanzhou
Super 8 Hotel 168CNY

The Yellow River, known as the “cradle of Chinese civilization”, is the second longest river in China and the sixth longest in the world. It is also one of the most dangerous, responsible for literally millions of deaths, earning it the monikers “China’s Sorrow” and “Scourge of the Sons of Han”. It originates in the Bayan Har mountains of western China, flows over 5,700 kms through nine Chinese provinces, and empties into the Bohai Sea in north-eastern China.  “The Yellow River is one of several rivers that are essential for China’s very existence. At the same time, however, it has been responsible for several deadly floods, including the only natural disasters in recorded history that have killed more than a million people. The deadliest was a 1332-33 flood that killed 7 million people. Close behind is the 1887 flood, which killed anywhere from 900,000 to 2 million people, and a 1931 flood (part of a massive number of floods that year) that killed 1-4 million people.” Floods have resulted from: (1) sedimentation carried from the Loess Plateau, which causes undetectable subaqueous dams that burst and inundate; (2)  the collapse of ice dams in Inner Mongolia (“Nowadays, explosives dropped from aircraft are used to break the ice dams before they become dangerous.”); (3) sabotage and deliberate flooding as a strategy of war, for example, the “1642 flood was man-made, caused by the attempt of the Ming governor of Kaifeng to use the river to destroy the peasant rebels under Li Zicheng who had been besieging the city for the past six months. He directed his men to break the dikes in an attempt to flood the rebels, but destroyed his own city instead: the flood and the ensuing famine and plague are estimated to have killed 300,000 of the city’s previous population of 378,000”. In “1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Nationalist troops under Chiang Kai-Shek broke the levees holding back the river ... causing what has been called a “war-induced natural disaster” ... The goal of the operation was to stop the advancing Japanese troops by following a strategy of “using water as a substitute for soldiers”  [The] flood ... took some 500,000 to 900,000 Chinese lives, along with an unknown number of Japanese soldiers.” (Quotes from Wikipedia)

Lanzhou stretches for 20km along the south bank of the Yellow River. In an attractive park fronting the river are models of wooden waterwheels designed first in 1556 and used for irrigation and grinding flour in the Ming dynasty. In 1952, 252 waterwheels still lined the city’s Yellow River banks.