Saturday, September 13, 2008

Yalong Bay

Hun River is a river in Liaoning Province, China, and one of the tributaries of the Liao River. The Hun river was formerly known as Shen River .

Sanya Bay

The Huangpu River is a 97km long river in China flowing through Shanghai.

Huangpu River used to be one branch of the . However, it has become the largest river in Shanghai, and Suzhou River became its branch.

It is an average of 400 meters wide and 9 meters deep. Shanghai gets most of its drinking water from Huangpu, which thus plays an important part for the metropolis. It divides the city into two regions: Pudong and Puxi .

The Bund in Shanghai is located along the river.

Places along the river


Other cities along the river include:
* Jiaxing

Liaodong Bay

The Anyang River or Huan River in is a tributary of the Huang He. Yinxu, the capital of the Yin Dynasty, was built on its banks at the beginning of the 14th century B.C.E, near present-day Anyang.

Laizhou Bay

The Huai River is a major river in China. The Huai River is located about mid-way between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, the two largest rivers in China, and like them runs from west to east. However, the Huai River does not flow all the way to the sea, making it notoriously vulnerable to flooding.

The Huai River-Qinling Mountains line is regarded as the geographical dividing line between North China and South China. This line approximates the 0 degree January isotherm and the 800 mm isohyet in China.

The Huai river has a length of 1,078 kilometers and a drainage area of 174,000 square kilometers.

Course


The Huai River originates in Tongbai Mountain in Henan province. It flows through southern Henan, northern Anhui, and northern Jiangsu, entering the Yangtze River at Jiangdu, Yangzhou.

Historically, the Huai River entered the Yellow Sea at Yuntiguan through a broad and level lower course. It was long used to irrigate the surrounding farmlands, and was the centre of an extensive network of canals and tributaries. Beginning in 1194, however, the Yellow River to the north repeatedly changed its course southwards to run into the Huai River. The resulting silting was so heavy that after the Yellow River changed back to its northerly course for the most recent time in 1897, the geography of the Huai River basin was changed significantly by the creation of new high lands, lakes, and the built up silt of the Yellow River's historical southern course. As a result, water from the mid-section of the river could not easily flow into the lower section, while water in the lower section could not find an outlet to the sea. The problem was exacerbated in the Second World War, when the government, in an attempt to check the pace of the invasion, flooded the lower Huai basin by opening the Yellow River's southern levee. The mainstem of the Yellow River flowed through the levee breach for the next nine years, further disrupting the Huai river system.

The result of these changes was that water from the Huai River pools up into into Lake Hongze, and then runs southwards towards the Yangtze River. Major and minor floods occurred frequently, with the area suffering droughts in between floods. In the 450 years to 1950, the Huai River saw, on average, 94 major floods per century.

Attempts to solve the Huai River's problems have focussed on building outlets for the Huai River into the Yangtze River and the sea. Currently, the major part of the river's waterflow enters the Yangtze River via Lake Hongze. The North Jiangsu Irrigation Main Channel also diverts some of its water along its old historical course to the sea, and is planned to be upgraded with a new parallel channel. Several former distributaries also carry some water to the sea.

Korea Bay

The Hongshui River is a tributary of the in Southern China.
It has 10 large dams on it, that provide electric power and flood control.

Several of the dams are equipped with capable of lifting vessels of 300 tons displacement.

Jiaozhou Bay

The Han River in China was often referred to as Hànshǔi in antiquity. It is a left tributary of the Yangtze River with a length of 1532 km.

The Han River rises in southwestern Shaanxi and then crosses into Hubei. It merges with the Yangtze at Wuhan, a city of several million. The merging rivers divide the city of Wuhan into three areas, that of , Hankou, and Hanyang.

Hangzhou Bay

The Hai River , previously called Bai He , is a river in China which flows through Beijing and Tianjin into the Bohai Gulf of the Yellow Sea.

The He River is formed at Tianjin by five rivers, the Southern Canal, Ziya River, Daqing River, Yongding River, and the Northern Canal. The southern and northern canals are parts of the . The Southern Canal is joined by Wei River at Linqing. The Northern Canal joins with the Bai He at . The Northern Canal is also the only waterway from the sea to Beijing. Therefore, the early westerns also called the Hai He as Bai He.

At Tianjin, through the , the Hai connects with the and rivers. The Hai He river systems was greatly modified by the Grand Canal. Before the Grand Canal, Wei River, Ziya River, Yongding River and Bai He used to have their own river mouths. When the Grand Canal was built, it cut through the lower reaches of these rivers to collect more water for sailing. Only one water outlet was left, which is the current course of the Hai He.

Hai He is 1,329 long from the longest tributary. However, from Tianjin to its mouth, Hai He is only around 70km. Its basin has an area of approximately 319,000 km? . Its annual flow is only half that of the Yellow River or one-thirtieth that of the Yangtze River.



Like the Yellow River, the Hai is exceedingly muddy because of the powdery soil through which it flows. The silt carried by the water deposites in the lower reach, sometimes causing water to overflow. The floods from the five major triburaries only has one shallow outlet to the sea, which makes the flood even stronger. Because China's capital and the second largest city Beijing, the third largest city Tianjin are both located in the Hai He Basin, Hai He flood will cause a significant loss. To allevate flooding, reservoirs are built and artificial channels dug to divert floods directly into the sea. For example, the Chaobai river is diverted to the Chaobai Xin river and is no longer joined with the Northern Canal.

In recent years, due to the industial and urban development in the Hai He basin, the volume of flow is greatly decreased. Many smaller triburary and some of the major triburaries dries out for the most of time during a year. The less water flow further worsens water pollution. The water shortage in the Hai He basin is expected to be solved by the South-North Water Transfer Project.

Further reading


*Domagalski, J.L., et al. . ''Comparative water-quality assessment of the Hai He River basin in the People's Republic of China and three similar basins in the United States'' . Reston, VA: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey.

Haitang Bay

The Gan River of southern China travels 885 km north through Jiangxi before flowing into Lake Poyang and thence into the Yangtze River. It is the major artery for Nanchang.

Daya Bay

The Fen River is a river in Shanxi Province, the People's Republic of China. It rises in the Guancen Mountain in Ningwu County in northeast Shanxi, flows southeast into the basin of Taiyuan, and then through the central valley of Shanxi, it joins the Yellow River in the west of city of Hejin. The river is 694-kilometer long and is one of two important tributaries to the Yellow River. The river drains an area of 39,417 square kilometers, which is 25.3% of the area of Shanxi Province. The river nurtured the 2500-year-old Sanjin Civilization, and has since been called the Mother River of people in Shanxi.

As any river that flows through a city, the Fen River added extra charm to the city of Taiyuan. The construction of dams upstream, however, have since reduced the once abundant flow of the river to a mere trickle, and the river bed became literally dry.

In 1990s, the municipal government of Taiyuan built artificial and removable structures across the river at different locations to create reservoirs of water for landscaping purposes. The surface area of these reservoirs amounts to 1.3 million square meters, and along with newly created vegetation of 1.3 million square meters on the banks, forms the Fen River Park.

Dalianwan Bay

The Ejin River , also known as the Heihe River , is a major river system that originates on the northern Gansu side of the Qilian Shan mountains. A total of 800 km long, the river has two major branches: the western branch flows from Zhangye through and Jiuquan, while the eastern branch flows through Ganzhou. The two branches merge near Gaotai and flow north into the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where the river terminates in the Ejin Basin in the Gobi Desert.

The former Tangut capital of Khara-Khoto, now deserted, lies near the lower end of the river. According to legend, the city was abandoned after forces diverted the river away from the city in 1372.
European explorers to visit the area include Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov and John DeFrancis .

The river area has been suffering from acute desertification. Ground water levels have dropped by as much as 5 meters since the 1940s, while forest coverage near the river shrunk by 1924 km? between 1958 and 1994 and the Juyanhai Lake, once 1200 km?., has dried up entirely.

Dalian Bay

Egongling River is located in Longgang District in China.

Bohai Bay

The Daxia River is a tributary of the Yellow River in southern Gansu Province in China's far west.