The Yangtze River

The Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world. We called it Chang Jiang which means the long river in Chinese. It flows for 6,300 kilometers (3,915 mi) from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It plays an important role in Chinese long history.  If you look on the Chinese map, you will see the Yangtze River looks like a dividing line between North and South China, and actually there are many cultural and physical differences between North and South China. 

The famous Three Gorges Dam was built on the Yangtze River. It is the world's largest electricity-generating plant of any kind. Chinese government had a long time dispute on whether it was good or not to build this dam. The dam was originally envisioned in The International Development of China, in 1919. In 1992, the National People’s Congress approved. It brings lots of benefits in economic area, but it also caused large significant ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides.