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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