Land, people and culture 5

carries yellow (more accurately, brown) silt from the mountains down to the plains. The silt is deposited to contribute to a fi ne-grained, easily worked loess soil that has enabled China’s farmers to till the land for centuries.2

The waters of the Yellow River then irrigate this loess terrain. However, the silt that has been such a boon to rural China has also destroyed it periodically: the accumulation of silt deposits builds up over time and causes the river to burst its banks, fl ooding the farms and villages of the North China Plain and causing great loss of life as well as physical devastation and economic and social disruption. In one fateful year, 1851, the spectacular intensity of the fl ooding forced the river to change its course. Before the inundation, it fl owed into the ocean south of the Shandong Peninsula; afterwards it emerged to the north, at its present exit point. Not for nothing has the Yellow River been called ‘China’s sorrow’. The river that the world knows as the Yangzi (Yangtse) is known in China as the Changjiang, which simply means ‘Long River’, which it is – its total length is 3,964 miles. It fl ows from its source high on the Tibetan Plateau through spectacular gorges, passes through the very centre of China and spills out into the Yellow Sea just to the north of Shanghai. Its great breadth is as signifi cant as its great length. For centuries it was impossible to bridge the torrent for a distance of hundreds of miles and, in many places, it is still necessary to use a ferry to cross from one bank to the other. The construction of the great bridge at Nanjing, which was completed in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution, was proclaimed a major triumph for Chinese engineers and for the collective spirit of the People’s Republic. Because of the diffi culty that there has always been in crossing the Changjiang, the river was a major physical barrier and it is the natural boundary between northern and southern China – a separation which accounts in part for the pronounced cultural differences between the north and the south. The productive rice-growing areas of the south were traditionally known as Jiangnan (‘south of the river’, that is to the south of the Changjiang) and these areas have retained distinctive spoken languages and cultures which, especially in the rural areas, are quite unlike those of the northern, Mandarin-speaking part of China.

The Three Gorges hydroelectric project which dams the upper reaches of the river is a colossal and controversial feat of engineering which began in 1993, has submerged some 1,200 towns and villages and has displaced thousands of local residents. It has been criticised by environmental campaigners and many have blamed it for the increased pollution of the river. A more detailed consideration of the Three Gorges project can be found in Chapter 14.

Another important watercourse which is vital to the regional economy of south China is the Pearl River or Zhujiang. The Pearl River is China’s third longest and it is produced by the confl uence of three smaller rivers: the Xi Jiang (West River), the Bei Jiang (North River), and the Dong Jiang (East River). The river and its tributaries fl ow through the provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong before emptying into the South China Sea in the great Pearl River Delta.

The Pearl River Delta is home to some of the most dynamic and enterprising urban economies of contemporary China, including the pioneering Special Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224  |  Page 225  |  Page 226  |  Page 227  |  Page 228  |  Page 229  |  Page 230  |  Page 231  |  Page 232  |  Page 233  |  Page 234  |  Page 235  |  Page 236  |  Page 237  |  Page 238  |  Page 239  |  Page 240  |  Page 241  |  Page 242  |  Page 243  |  Page 244  |  Page 245  |  Page 246  |  Page 247  |  Page 248  |  Page 249  |  Page 250  |  Page 251  |  Page 252  |  Page 253  |  Page 254  |  Page 255  |  Page 256  |  Page 257  |  Page 258  |  Page 259  |  Page 260  |  Page 261  |  Page 262  |  Page 263  |  Page 264  |  Page 265  |  Page 266  |  Page 267  |  Page 268  |  Page 269  |  Page 270  |  Page 271  |  Page 272  |  Page 273  |  Page 274  |  Page 275  |  Page 276  |  Page 277  |  Page 278  |  Page 279  |  Page 280  |  Page 281  |  Page 282  |  Page 283  |  Page 284  |  Page 285  |  Page 286  |  Page 287  |  Page 288  |  Page 289  |  Page 290  |  Page 291  |  Page 292  |  Page 293  |  Page 294  |  Page 295  |  Page 296  |  Page 297  |  Page 298  |  Page 299  |  Page 300  |  Page 301  |  Page 302  |  Page 303  |  Page 304  |  Page 305  |  Page 306  |  Page 307  |  Page 308