56 Fun Facts About Yangtze

Besides the Nile, which river is longer than the Yangtze?

The Amazon is the other one, and whether it or the Nile is really the world's longest river is still disputed.

What does the Chinese name Chang Jiang literally mean?

Long River is the name used in China, while it was mainly Westerners who applied 'Yangtze' to the whole river.

Where does the Yangtze rise?

The Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau hold its headstreams, and accounts differ over whether the Ulan Moron or the Dangqu is where it truly begins.

Into which sea does the Yangtze empty?

The East China Sea receives it, and the silt the river carries down from upstream built Chongming, the big island sitting in its mouth.

In 1937, aircraft from which country sank the US gunboat Panay on the Yangtze?

Japan's government accepted responsibility but called the attack unintentional, then paid a large indemnity, which helped keep the incident from escalating.

What does Jinsha, the name of the upper Yangtze from Yibin to Qinghai, mean?

Gold Sands is the meaning, and prospectors have long panned real gold from the river's waters.

Which famous canyon does the Jinsha stretch of the upper Yangtze pass through?

Tiger Leaping Gorge is where, legend says, a hunted tiger escaped by leaping across the river from a rock in midstream.

What are the names of the Three Gorges, from west to east?

Qutang, Wu and Xiling is the order; Qutang is the shortest, and teams of men once hauled boats upstream through the gorges on ropes.

As of 2025, which world record does the Three Gorges Dam hold?

World's largest power station by capacity is its record, yet its reservoir has been blamed for more landslides and earthquakes in the region.

Which Chinese leader envisioned a great dam across the Yangtze's gorges in a 1919 book?

Sun Yat-sen floated the idea, and when the reservoir finally filled, the higher water made the gorges' famous cliffs look noticeably lower.

Besides its staircase locks, what carries boats of up to 3,000 tons past the Three Gorges Dam?

A ship lift raises boats like an elevator, so smaller vessels can skip the five-stage locks, which take hours to pass through.

Roughly how many people were displaced by the Three Gorges reservoir?

1.1 to 1.4 million people had to move, and the rising water also drowned countless archaeological sites along the gorges.

The steel used in the Three Gorges Dam would be enough to build how many Eiffel Towers?

63 towers' worth of steel went in, and the dam's deep reservoir now lets oceangoing ships sail through the gorges to a port some 1,400 miles inland.

In 2020, the Three Gorges Dam broke which dam's annual power output record?

Itaipu Dam, on the Brazil–Paraguay border, had set the mark in 2016, and it was heavy monsoon rain that pushed the Three Gorges past it.

A NASA scientist calculated that filling the Three Gorges reservoir would slightly slow what?

Earth's rotation slows because the raised water shifts mass away from the planet's axis, like a skater stretching out their arms, but the day grows by only 0.06 microseconds.

Which huge Buddha statue sits above a Yangtze tributary where many boats had once been wrecked?

The Leshan Giant Buddha was begun by a monk to protect boatmen, and the rock cut away while carving it is said to have filled the riverbed and made the water safer.

Which Yangtze river dolphin was declared functionally extinct after a 2006 survey found none?

The baiji was the last of its whole family of river dolphins, so that entire family has probably vanished with it.

Which Yangtze fish, last seen alive in 2003, was declared extinct in a 2019 study?

The Chinese paddlefish could no longer reach its upriver spawning grounds once dams blocked its migration.

The Yangtze giant softshell, one of the rarest animals alive, is what kind of creature?

A turtle: in 2019 the only female then known died at a Chinese zoo, shortly after vets tried once more to inseminate her artificially and save the species.

The Chinese alligator, historically called the 'muddy dragon', survives in the wild in which province?

Anhui is where it clings on, and in summer it feeds at night, a habit put down to avoiding both people and the heat.

Which critically endangered Yangtze-basin amphibian is widely farmed in China?

The Chinese giant salamander is prized as a delicacy and in traditional medicine, yet farms still take wild animals, so poaching goes on.

In 2020, China began a ten-year ban on what in key stretches of the Yangtze?

Fishing stopped so depleted stocks could recover, and fishermen had to find new livelihoods with state support.

Which famous aviator surveyed China's catastrophic 1931 Yangtze floods from the air?

Charles Lindbergh flew the survey with his wife Anne, but their plane capsized in the Yangtze as it was being lowered from a British carrier.

After the 1998 Yangtze floods, experts blamed much of the flooding on what upstream?

Logging had cleared forest in the upper basin, and the floods convinced China to restore tree cover there.

The Battle of Red Cliffs on the Yangtze in 208-209 AD saw the defeat of which northern warlord?

Cao Cao had chained his ships together, possibly against seasickness, so when Huang Gai faked a defection and sent fire ships in, the fleet burned.

Which wine-loving Tang poet wrote of speeding down the Yangtze gorges from White Emperor City in a day?

Li Bai is thought to have written it after a pardon reached him on his way upriver into exile, which explains the joyful dash back downstream.

The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, opened in 1968, was the first to cross which part of the river?

The lower reaches had no bridge before this one, which joined a railway the river had split for decades.

Which leader took staged swims in the Yangtze at Wuhan in 1956 and 1966 to show off his health?

Mao Zedong wanted the masses to take up swimming too, and party propaganda turned his river swims into a nationwide craze.

In 1911, a mutiny at Wuchang, now part of Wuhan, began the revolution that overthrew which dynasty?

The Qing dynasty fell after a revolutionary plot was uncovered, pushing Wuchang's troops to mutiny, and city after city then declared against it.

Which landmark on the Wuchang bank of the Yangtze was first built in AD 223 for Sun Quan?

Yellow Crane Tower has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, and the tower standing today only went up in the 1980s.

Which far-inland Yangtze city was Nationalist China's capital through most of World War II?

Chongqing was split off from Sichuan in 1997 and took in the province's whole eastern part, vastly expanding its land and population.

Which animal aboard HMS Amethyst, trapped on the Yangtze in 1949, was awarded a medal for gallantry?

The ship's cat, Simon, was wounded by shrapnel yet kept killing the rats that threatened the stranded crew's food.

With British forces poised to attack Nanjing on the Yangtze in 1842, China agreed to cede which territory?

Hong Kong Island was only part of the price: China also paid reparations and opened five ports to foreign traders.

Which lake in northern Hunan collects almost all of that province's rivers before they reach the Yangtze?

Dongting Lake can swell to several times its normal size when the Yangtze spills into it each summer, so it works as a vast natural holding basin for the river.

The Yangtze Delta lies at the heart of which historical region?

Jiangnan's fertile land fed a dense population and produced prized silk, which helped make it one of China's richest regions.

The Grand Canal links the Yangtze basin to which northern city?

Beijing sits at the canal's northern end, and for centuries barges hauled tax grain up it to feed the capital and its armies.

Which ruler completed the Grand Canal in 609, linking the Yangtze region to Luoyang?

Emperor Yang of Sui forced farmers, slaves and criminals to dig it, and huge numbers of them died from overwork and disease.

What did the carvings on Baiheliang, a rock ridge in the Yangtze at Fuling, record for over 1,200 years?

Low water levels were carved there, yet the Three Gorges reservoir has since drowned the ridge for good, so visitors now see it through an underwater museum.

Which American novelist, later a Nobel laureate, grew up in the Yangtze port of Zhenjiang?

Pearl S. Buck tried to go back in 1972, but China turned her down, and she died the following year without seeing her childhood home again.

What did ancient peoples place in caves and on ledges high on cliffs in the Three Gorges area?

Coffins rested on stakes set into the rock face or sat in cliff caves, and why they were put so high is still a mystery.

Which crop were the Yangtze region's Hemudu and Majiabang cultures among the earliest to cultivate?

Rice was only partly domesticated in their time, and they still gathered wild foods such as acorns alongside it.

The upper Yangtze's deep southwestern gorges belong to which UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan is where the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween run side by side, yet the Mekong reaches the sea in Vietnam and the Salween in Myanmar.

Qu Yuan, the ancient poet whose traditional hometown is Zigui on the Yangtze, is remembered at which festival?

The Dragon Boat Festival's races are said to recall villagers rowing out to save Qu Yuan as he drowned, and its dumplings the food they threw in to keep fish off his body.

Which Ming admiral led the treasure fleets that were built near Nanjing and sailed down the Yangtze to sea?

Zheng He sailed as far as East Africa, and a giraffe he brought home was hailed at court as a qilin, a lucky mythical beast.

Around 256 BC, Dujiangyan was built on the Min River to water which plain?

The Chengdu Plain had long been flooded by the Min, but once the system was finished the floods there ceased and its farmers prospered.

Which fruit appears in the Chinese name of the rainy season that soaks the Yangtze region each early summer?

Plum rain is the name, and its downpours can swell the Yangtze into floods.

Fengdu, a stop on many Yangtze river cruises, is famous as the 'City of' what?

Ghosts are its theme because legend makes it the home of the king of the dead, and its hilltop temples show the punishments sinners are said to face.

Which British diplomat's romanisation gave English the spelling 'Yang-tzu Chiang' in 1867?

Thomas Wade's system, as reworked by Herbert Giles, was the favourite English way to spell Chinese until pinyin replaced it in mainland China.

Which river flows past Shanghai's Bund before joining the Yangtze?

The Huangpu River's far bank, facing the Bund, was farmland, wharves and villages until the 1990s, and it is now Shanghai's wall of skyscrapers.

What happened to the Yangtze temple of the Three Kingdoms general Zhang Fei when the Three Gorges reservoir rose?

Rebuilt at a new site, the temple was taken apart piece by piece and put back together true to the original.

Which famous strategist did the dying Shu ruler Liu Bei summon to Baidicheng, on the Yangtze?

Zhuge Liang was named regent for Liu Bei's son and heir, after a crushing defeat by Wu had left the ruler gravely ill.

Which star played a rebellious US Navy machinist on a Yangtze gunboat in the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles?

Steve McQueen earned his only Oscar nomination for the role, and while filming was delayed, director Robert Wise made The Sound of Music instead.

Which emperor ordered the Lingqu Canal, linking the Xiang and Li rivers, to supply his armies in the south?

Qin Shi Huang's armies went on to conquer the far south, where he set up new commanderies including Guilin and Nanhai.

Which state from the middle Yangtze conquered the kingdom of Yue in the 4th century BC?

Chu had once armed Yue as an ally against Wu, before turning on it and splitting Yue's lands with Qi.

Which Yangtze native, a prized autumn delicacy in Shanghai, has invaded rivers such as the Thames?

The mitten crab, named for its furry claws, burrows into riverbanks, so where it invades it can destabilise the banks and clog drainage systems.

Which rebellion captured Nanjing on the Yangtze in 1853 and held it as its capital until 1864?

The Taiping Rebellion's leader, Hong Xiuquan, claimed after a vision to be Jesus's younger brother; when government troops retook Nanjing, they massacred its civilians.