Tuesday, August 26, 2014

This Is What Asia’s Longest River Looks Like

By Jordan G. Teicher

At nearly 4,000 miles from mouth to source, China’s Yangtze River is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world. Its banks are home to about 400 million people, or around one-third of the country’s population—more than the entire population of the United States. For thousands of years, the Yangtze has played an essential role in China’s culture, economy, and politics, and since 1950, the river and its basin “have been the focus of much of China’s economic modernization.”
In 2006, London-based Nadav Kander came to China with a desire to witness a country “that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself,” one that’s growing at “a relentless pace.” He chose to follow the Yangtze not because of an interest in the river, per se, but rather “an interest in confining myself to a pathway through China that had meaning.” Over the next 2½ years, Kander made five trips along the river, traveling for as much as 10 days at a time. He traveled once by boat, but mostly got around by car along with an assistant, a translator, and a driver. His route took him from the river’s mouth by the East China Sea to the Three Gorges Dam (the largest dam in the world) past Chongqing (one of the world’s largest cities), and finally to the river’s source on the Plateau of Tibet. Photos here.

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