The Yangtze River

The longest river in China, and the third-longest in the world, is the 6, 300-kilometer-long (3,900 miles) Changjiang, more commonly known in the West as the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River rises in the Tanggula Mountains of Qinghai Province. Changjiang is the name commonly used for the middle reaches of the river, while the locals call the lower reaches, from Yangzhou to the estuary, the Yangtze. This is the name with which missionaries and colonialists became familiar and which, as a result, became established in Europe.

Along a stretch of 200 kilometers (130 miles), the river passes through the Three Gorges. In the Qutang Gorge, the river is only 100 meters wide, and the difference between deep and shallow water can be 60 meters (200 ft). In the Wu Gorge, mountains rise to a height of 500 to 1,000 meters(1,600 to 3,300 ft).

China's modern-day monolithic engineering project is the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which will soon control and subdue the mighty river, forever altering the face of the river and lands surrounding it. When completed, the dam will be the largest in the world at 180 meters (600 ft) tall and 2.25 kilometers (1.4 miles) long. There will be a reservoir behind the dam that is over 640 kilometers (400 miles) long and producing as much as one-ninth of China's electrical power.