China's Rivers (2)

The Changjiang is China’s longest river, and the third longest in the world. With the Tuotuo River as its source, it flows a total length of 6,300 kilometers through Qinghai, Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai, and finally empties itself into the East China Sea. The total drainage area is more than 1.8 million square kilometers. It is estimated that the mean volume of water discharged at the mouth of the river is 22,000 cubic meters per second, while the sediment deposited at the mouth amounts to about 182 milllion cubic meters annually. The river is fed by about 700 tributaries, chiefly the Yalong, Minjiang, Jialing, Wujiang, Xiangjiang, Hanjiang, Ganjiang, and Huangpu rivers.

The Changjiang River valley, with 24.67 million hectares of cultivated land, has always been an important agricultural base in China. Grain and cotton outputs make up more than 40 percent and 30 percent of China’s total respectively, and rapeseed, sesame, raw silk, tea and tobacco also flourish here.

The Changjiang is the major east-west transportation artery for Central China. It serves a wide hinterland throughout its basin. Marco Polo once commented, “ on its banks are innumerable cities and towns, and the amount of shipping it carries upstream and down is so inconceivable that no one in the world who had not seen it with his own eyes could possibly credit it. Its width is such that it is more like a sea than a river.” In the fast-flowing portions of the river, river craft used to be pulled upstream by teams of coolies. They hauled their loads on long bamboo ropes from the river’s edge, or from steep paths cut into the cliffsides. The journey down stream through the gorges was once a fearsome dash through rolling, rock-strewn waters. Today, the waters have been somewhat tamed, and the river is navigable from Yibin to the sea with different forms of transportation. The dam which is being built across the river will be one of the largest in the world.