Chang River
Called the Changjiang (Long River) in Chinese, the Chang (Yangtze) at 3,900 miles is the third-longest river in the world and the longest one in Asia. It originates in the Tanggulashan on the border of Tibet and Qinghai Province and then runs south until it empties into the East China Sea near Shanghai. The river derives its name from the ancient kingdom of Yang, which settled regions along it.
The Chang originates in the Kunlun Mountains and then runs south through the high mountain valleys in Qinghai, Tibet, and Yunnan Provinces before turning northeast at Shiigu. From there, the Chang flows through Sichuan Province before entering the famous Three Gorges. It then crosses central China through Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Jiangsu Provinces before emptying into the East China Sea at Chongming Island, ten miles north of Shanghai. Stretching the length of the country, the Chang has served as the unofficial boundary between north and south China—no bridge was built over the eastern section of the Chang until 1969, when the Changjiang Daqiao Bridge was built at Nanjing.
Throughout Chinese history, the Chang has featured prominently in the development of culture and trade. As far back as the Neolithic period, settlements have been found along the lower Chang. Qin dynasty founder Qin Shi Huangdi built waterways and canals to allow trade from Yangzhou to Guangzhou, a distance of 1,200 miles. Since then, the Chang has been the main transportation artery across central China as it passes through many of its economic and industrial centers. Since the Tang era, the Chang delta has become a center for growing and shipping rice.
About 1,800 miles of the Chang is navigable year-round. In the early 1990s, the Chang and its major tributaries drained an area of 1.8 million square kilometers—a quarter of China's total cultivated land—in which 386 million people live. The network of rivers and associated canals carries some 85 percent of China's domestic waterborne traffic. It passes through many of its major cities, including Kunmin, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Shanghai, and Nanjing. The gross value of industrial product of the areas along the Chang makes up about 40 percent of China's total.
Keith Leitich
Further Reading
Huang, Philip C. (1990) The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Van Slyke, Lyman P. (1988) Yangtze: Nature, History, and the River. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
This complete Chang River contains 392 words. This
article contains 850 words (approx. 3 pages at 300
words per page).
