The Yellow River (Huang He - 黃河) (10) The Great Yellow Transportation Road
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Today's Yellow River is not as wild as before. Floods do however still occur.
Many hydro-electric dams have been constructed or are under construction on the Yellow River.
On November 28 of 2008 AD, Chinese official confirmed that pollution has now rendered a third of the Yellow River unfit for any use.
The river has always been an important source of Life. Apart of being the main source of water for millions of farmers (and now City dwellers) the yellow river has been a vital route of transportation and communications. In fact, in North and Western China it was one of the main 'highways' for travel and virtually the only way to travel large distances at reasonable speed.
Ships of many sizes still sail up and down the river, just as they have done for centuries.
You Tube Video: BBC News - China's famous Yellow River is fading
According to state news agency Xinhua, the Yellow River Conservancy Committee has reported that 4,557.6 km of the river and its tributaries’ total 13,492.7 km length is classified as ‘type-five negative’ polluted. Only 2,174 km was type one or two, and therefore suitable for drinking.
During the last assessment in 2006, 31% of the 12,510.8 km analysed was type-five negative.
Registering below level five means “it’s unfit for drinking, aquaculture, industrial use and even agriculture, according to criteria used by the United Nations Environmental Program”.
The country’s second-longest river, the Yellow River, was so polluted that it was not safe for drinking.
Few waterways capture the soul of a nation
more deeply than the Yellow River, or the Huang He, as it is known in China. It is to China what the Nile is to Egypt: the cradle of civilization, a symbol of enduring glory, a force of nature both feared and revered.
The River has been hailed as China's Golden Dragon, as well as cursed as the everlasting sorrow of the People due to its seasonal floodings.
But today, what the Chinese call the Mother River is dying. Stained with pollution, tainted with sewage, crowded with ill-conceived dams, it dwindles at its mouth to a lifeless trickle.
The demise of the legendary river is a tragedy whose consequences extend far beyond the more than 150 million people it sustains. The Yellow Rivers' plight also illuminates the dark side of China's economic miracle, an environmental crisis that has led to a shortage of the one resource no nation can live without: water.
Raft made out of wood & air-filled pig skin bladders traditionally used to cross the river.
