There’s nothing like escaping than watching this timelapse of the melting ice of China’s Huang He River. This time-lapse video shows the spectacular thaw that occurred between February 13 and 25, 2017.
The thawing of the Yellow River is an ever-impressive annual spectacle, as shown by the images shot by the Chinese television channel CGTN. The portion of the river subject to freezing is located in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, in the south of Mongolia (see map below).
“Along its course, there are some 50 major cities (including Beijing, 18 million inhabitants, and Tianjin, 10 million), industries and oil fields, some 15 hydroelectric dams and finally, 7.5 million hectares of cultivated land (more than 10 times the Beauce) », can we read in a blog of the daily Liberation.
The Yellow River or Huang He (黃河) is the second largest river in China with its 5,464 kilometers in length. It is just behind the Blue River or Yangzi Jiang (扬子江) with a length of 5,980 kilometers. This very important river for China is fiercely monitored by the country’s authorities after having already been responsible for incredible droughts and spectacular floods in addition to being polluted up to 80% as indicated by the Yellow River Protection Commission . The 40,000 people on this commission are usually tasked with monitoring the vagaries of the river and environmental issues.
To do a little history, we must go back to 1938 to remember the most spectacular floods of the Yellow River, considered even to be the greatest military ecological disaster in history. The disaster occurred in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) when the Chinese nationalist army of the Kuomintang blew up the embankments of the river and deliberately flooded 50,000 square kilometers of land. It was then a question of trying to stop the advance of the Japanese army.
Here are the magnificent images of the Yellow River thaw:
Sources: France Info – Encyclopædia Universalis – Liberation