Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Yangtze River

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located in the nation of China is the world's third longest river, the Yangtzee. The Yangtze River has been one of the defining geographical features in China since the dawn of history. It has had a significant role in cultivating Chinese civilization, and its flooding has been responsible for some of the greatest natural disasters in the world. And controlling the power of the river has resulted in the construction of the world's largest dam. Learn more about the Yangtze River, one of the great rivers of the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. perceptions about the past were wrong.

Starting point is 00:00:45 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Each of the major rivers of the world has a different story. There are some rivers like the Nile or the Tigris and Euphrates, which have a very deep history and were fundamental in the rise of the civilizations on their banks.

Starting point is 00:01:19 There are other rivers like the Rhine or the Mississippi, which don't have quite the same historical credentials, but are extremely important economically. The Yangtze River checks both boxes. It has deep historical significance and remains one of the most important economic rivers in the world today. Before I get into the history and importance of the river, I should explain some of the geographical facts of the river.

Starting point is 00:01:43 The Yangtzee is the world's third largest river, by length behind only the Nile in the Amazon, and it's the fifth or sixth largest river in the world in terms of total discharge volume, depending on how you define it and the season of the year. It's also the longest river in the world, which is entirely in a single country, and it's also the longest river in the Eurasian landmass. The river begins in the Tibetan Plateau and winds 6,300 kilometers, or approximately 3,915 miles to the Pacific Ocean near the city of Shanghai. The Yangtze River Basin is the heart of China, and it covers a full one-fifth of the area of the country, and one-third of the population lives within the Yangtze River Basin.

Starting point is 00:02:24 The Yangt Delta alone near Shanghai is responsible for a full fifth of the Chinese economy. The name Yangtze is actually not the name of the river in Mandarin. The word Yangtze is actually an anglicization of the French term for the river. In Chinese, it's known as, Changjiang, which simply means long river. The river flows roughly from west to east, and it's traditionally served as the dividing line between northern and southern China, sort of similar to how the Mississippi River divides the United States between east and west. The river can be roughly divided into three sections, the upper, middle, and lower Yang Sea. The upper Yang Sea begins in the

Starting point is 00:03:04 Tangula Mountains on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau and flows eastward through the provinces of Qinghai, Tibet, and Yunnan. This stretch of river is known for its very deep gorges and valleys. The Middle Yangtzee flows through the heart of China. This is the most developed and economically important section of the river. It flows through the provinces of Sichuan, Chongqing, Hu Bai, Hunan, and Jiangxi. And it's home to many of China's largest cities, including Chongqing, Wuhan, and the former imperial capital of Nanjing. The Yangtzee basin is often referred to as the breadbasket of China due to its fertile farmlands. The Middle Yangtzee is also the location of the Three Gorges. It's a series of Three Gorges, which for much of history,

Starting point is 00:03:48 served as a limit for navigation on the river. The lower Yang Sea constitutes the Yang Sea River Delta, which is roughly defined as being from Nanjing to the sea. Evidence of humans along the Yang Sea goes back a very long time. The first archaeological evidence of human activity dates back 27,000 years in the Three Gorges area. Despite the important role that the Yang Sea has played throughout Chinese history, what we think of as Chinese culture and civilization today did not actually originate along the Yang Sea. It originated along the Yellow River to the north. About 7,000 years ago, the lower Yang Sea became a major population center with the people known as the U.A. The U.A had very different cultural practices than the people in northern China,

Starting point is 00:04:33 including dyeing their teeth black and heavy tattooing. After the defeat of the U.A. by the Qing Dynasty, they began to adopt more the cultural practices of the north. After the consolidation of China, the importance of the Yang Sea only increased. Irrigation systems were put in place during the Han Dynasty, and by the Song Dynasty, the Yang Sea had become the wealthiest region in China. In addition to being agriculturally productive, the Yang Sea was also a major transportation corridor, allowing goods to be transported from the sea all the way into the interior of China.

Starting point is 00:05:05 It was part of the many routes which compromised the Silk Road. The importance of the Yang Sea was amplified with the construction of the Chinese Great Canal. While Nanjing was the capital of China for several periods in Chinese history, so was Beijing. The Grand Canal connected Beijing with the Yangtze River. The Grand Canal is probably worth an episode of its own at some point in the future, but it is the longest artificial waterway in the world. Construction on it began in the 4th century BC, and construction continued 4th centuries. The total length of the canal is approximately 1,100 miles or 1,800 kilometers.

Starting point is 00:05:44 As productive and fertile as the Yangtze River Valley was, there was a problem. Flooding. Extensive irrigation systems, which were built over the centuries, did mitigate much of the flooding on the Yang Sea, but it never eliminated it. Occasionally, flooding would be truly devastating. The river's worst flood, and what was probably the worst flood in world history, took place along the Yang Sea in 1931. China had experienced severe drought from 1928 to 1930, and the winter of 1930 and 1931 saw unusually heavy snowfall in the Tibetan plateau. As the snow started to melt in the spring, it coincided with extremely strong spring rains. By June, low-lying regions along the Yangt Sea

Starting point is 00:06:29 were already underwater. But the spring rains were just the start of an extremely long rainy season, which also saw an unusual nine typhoons make landfall that year. The result was a flooding not just of the Yang Sea, but of many of the tributaries of the river in the entire drainage basin. On top of the extreme rainfall, the dikes and levees on the Yang Sea at that time were in poor shape and were unable to hold back floodwaters. The result was the flooding of 180,000 square kilometers,

Starting point is 00:06:59 or 69,000 square miles of land. This is the equivalent of most of the, island of Great Britain, or the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut combined. Farm fields were flooded, which compounded the problem of drought from the previous years. The number of fatalities from the flooding has been estimated to be as high as four million people. The 1931 flood ranks not just as the worst flood in history in terms of death toll, but also as the worst natural disaster of any type in world history. The Yank Sea experienced severe flooding in 1954,

Starting point is 00:07:35 and again in 1998. The flooding wasn't frequent, but when it did happen, the results could be devastating. The idea of controlling flooding on the Yangt Sea goes back to at least the early 20th century. The founder of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, on whom I've done a previous episode, proposed the creation of a dam on the Yangtze River. In addition to controlling flooding, such a dam would also provide an enormous amount of electricity for China. An initial survey was conducted near the Three Gorges section of the river in 1932, immediately after the 1931 flooding. In 1944, during the war, United States engineers created a plan, and they even brought Chinese engineers back to the United States for training, but the plan never came to fruition due to the nationalist losing the Chinese civil war. The communists under Mao Zedong supported the idea of a Yangtze Dam, but they were unable to make any progress on it.

Starting point is 00:08:27 The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution left China in position where they were unable to undertake such a large project. While the dam on the Yang Sea would control flooding and produce an enormous amount of electrical power, there were serious environmental and cultural concerns about what a dam would do. The lake created by such a dam would destroy many communities along the river, cultural sites, as well as plant and animal species that inhabited the river. In the 1980s, with Mao behind them, the Chinese government ignored most of the concerns and decided to proceed with the dam. The dam project was approved at the 1992 session of the National People's Congress with 67% support. And I mentioned the vote total only because this was an extremely

Starting point is 00:09:08 low percentage of support for a body that normally voted on things unanimously. Construction began in 1994 and the dam was expected to be completed in 2006, but the project wasn't actually completed until 2012, almost 18 years after construction began. Dubbed the Three Gorges Dam, it's the largest dam in the world. It is 2.3 kilometers or 1.5 miles long. The dam used 27.2 million cubic meters of cement and enough steel to build the Eiffel Tower 63 times. The amount of electricity generated by the dam is astonishing.

Starting point is 00:09:45 When all of its turbines are functioning, it can produce 22,500 megawatts of power. It can produce more than twice the amount of electricity as the world's next largest dam. It was estimated that when the dam produced a thousand terawatt hours of electricity, it would pay for the construction of the project. And it was believed it would take 10 years to recoup the investment once the dam was completed. The dam managed to produce a thousand terawatt hours of electricity within its first year. In addition to the dam, there were also multiple locks constructed to facilitate transportation on the river.

Starting point is 00:10:20 Before the dam's construction, the three gorges was very difficult and dangerous to navigate. The new lock significantly reduced the cost of transportation on the river and increase the amount of freight transported on the river by almost an order of magnitude. Prior to the construction of the dam, 18 million tons of cargo passed through the Three Gorge's area every year. In 2022, there were over 159 million metric tons of cargo passing through the same area. The Yank Sea has a lot of problems due to the rapid growth of China over the last several decades. The Yangtze River sends more plastic pollution into the ocean than any other river in the world by a wide margin. For example, 90% of all of the plastic pollution in the ocean comes from just 10 rivers,

Starting point is 00:11:06 and the Yangtzee has more plastic waste than the other nine rivers in the top 10 combined. The good news is that steps are being taken to reduce the amount of plastic pollution in the river, which would be the single biggest thing that could be done on Earth to reduce overall plastic. pollution. The Yang Sea has been one of the most important rivers in the world for thousands of years, and it remains so today, being a source of transportation, electricity, and irrigation for much of China. Whatever the future may hold, it's quite likely that the Yang Sea will remain central to China for centuries to come. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Yangtze River

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