LETTER FROM ZHENZHOU:THE CRADLE of Chinese civilisation, the Yellow river, does not so much flow as ooze, making its muddy way across the north of this vast country, regularly flooding to disastrous effect, earning it the blighted monicker – China's Sorrow, writes CLIFFORD COONAN
Viewed up close, the river doesn’t appear to move at all, it’s like a glutinous spill of yellow mud, but this sclerotic waterway is a central channel running deep through the Chinese consciousness.
Here in Henan, which translates as “south of the river”, China’s most populous province with 100 million residents, you see the pagodas, the pavilions, the trees so familiar from the tea caddies of yore and the kung fu films of today.
Here you are standing not far from the famous Shaolin monastery which gave the world Caine, Grasshopper and the other figures familiar from the Kung FuTV show which immortalised the late David Carradine in the 1970s.
Like many national symbols, it acts as an inspiration to some, but this muddy expanse places a huge weight on the shoulders of the people forced to live up to expectations of such an ancient history.
Pollution may have killed Mother river, which originates in the Bayan Har mountains in Qinghai province in western China, then flows through nine provinces and empties into the Bohai Sea, bringing vast quantities of silt along for the ride.
In ancient times, the Yellow River was known simply as “river”, and it gets its yellow colour from the loess sediment suspended in the water.
The Yangtze river is the more thrusting of China’s big rivers, gushing manfully through the gorges of Sichuan and dashing would-be conquerors on its rapids. The Yellow river, China’s second-longest river, is 5,464km long and the world’s sixth biggest river, but somehow it is a far less appealing waterway.
Famously treacherous, it has flooded over 1,500 times in the last 4,000 years and changed course on at least 12 occasions.
“The Yellow river is the reason we Chinese have yellow skin,” said our guide, somewhat controversially, but not a phrase that any of those nearby would argue with.
There is a fatalism in the way Chinese people discuss the Yellow river’s drainage problems, as well there might. A flood of the river in 1887 in the North China Plain caused an estimated 900,000 to two million deaths.
In 1931, the Yellow river flooded and killed four million on the same plain. Then in June 1938, during the war against the Japanese, KMT nationalist troops under Chiang Kai-Shek broke the levees holding back the river in order to stop the advancing Japanese troops.
This resulted in the flooding of an area covering 54,000sq km, killing up 900,000 people and forcing the relocation of 11 million.
It took many months to shore up the dams after they were destroyed. Nowadays, there is a memorial, with a performance by workers planting spikes in the ground using their bare hands, and an appeal by the late Great Helmsman Mao Zedong to “control the Yellow river.”
There are mournful dirges and sullen poems written about the river’s destruction power.
However, at the moment in Zhengzhou, capital of China’s most populous province Henan, it seems like the river is the slowest moving thing around.The Yellow river seems to have little do with the new China growing up in the basin surrounding its sluggish transport.
There is a buzz in Zhengzhou that is just like the frantic feeling that characterised the early days of China’s rise – like Shenzhen in the early 1990s or Shanghai at the beginning of this century.
China’s economy is bucking the world trend by growing strongly. It should expand by at least 8 per cent this year compared with contractions in states like Ireland.
The government has spent heavily in a stimulus plan and you can see the positive effects in Zhengzhou. It’s in the government spending, in the cranes lining the boulevards and the new banks and post offices and mobile phone outlets opening up all over the city. In some ways, Zhengzhou is side-stepping the burden of expectation imposed by the Yellow river.
Guides enthusiastically tell you that 80 per cent of Chinese frozen dumplings come from here.
But the interest is in less prosaic issues – the new exhibition centre, designed by Canadian architects, surrounded by large golden eggs on a waterfront which spouts spectacular water shows every few minutes at peak times.
In one promotional film shown by city authorities, the music from Star Wars rings out, although Zhengzhou doesn’t need a seal of approval from Luke Skywalker. Zhengzhou is an ancient capital, close to the birthplace of the man considered to be the greatest of all the emperors, Huangdi.
Trying to find a cash machine that will accept foreign cash cards, not a problem in Beijing, is a challenge in Zhengzhou but not an insurmountable one.
“I know it’s easier in Beijing, but we’ll get better. Watch us, we’ll get better in Zhengzhou. We’ll beat them,” said one embarrassed resident, as he tried to help find a cash machine to take a foreign card.
Even though the river seems slightly surplus to requirements in the development story, it is poised to retain a central role, albeit not in a positive way.
At the fringes of the river, pollution begins to gather. In some places it has turned red, signalling the next challenge to face the waterway.
About one-third of the river is now polluted, mostly by industrial spillage.
The Yellow river will keep its central role in China’s thinking, though this time it will be about how it deals with the great geographical phenomena running through its confines.
The saying, “when the Yellow river flows clear” is equivalent to “it’ll be a cold day in hell”. Those in Zhenzhou are hoping for just that.