China’s Main Rivers: The Yellow River and the Yangtze

1. China’s Main Rivers:The Yellow River and the Yangtze Objective: By the end of today’s lesson you should be able to list the two major rivers in China, as well as their importance.

3. China’s GeographyYellow River • The two major rivers of China are the Yellow River: Huang He and the Yangtze River: Chang Jiang. • The Huang He, or Yellow River, gets its name from the rich yellow soil it carries as it flows across China. • It was also called “China’s sorrow” because when it over-flooded, many people drowned and homes were destroyed. • It helped make the soil fertile by leaving behind a rich layer of topsoil.

5. Residents survey the damage to houses that collapsed during the flooding in Guangan.

11. China’s GeographyYangtze River • The Chang Jiang or Yangtze River also brings rich topsoil to it’s river valley which helped in farming. • Outside it’s river valleys, only one-tenth of China’s land can be farmed because mountains and deserts cover most of it’s land. • The Himalaya close off China to the southwest. • The Kunlun Shan and Tian Shan Mountains close off China’s western border. • The Gobi Desert spreads east from the mountains.

12. China’s Geography • Mountains and deserts shaped Chinese history because they were like a wall which separated China from most other people. What other civilization have we talked about that was separated from other countries? India • China’s first civilization developed along the Huang He (Yellow) River Valley. • Over time the Chinese people united and created a homeland they called “The Middle Kingdom” which they believed was the world’s center. • The Chinese developed a unique way of life that lasted into modern times.

13. - Early Chinese writing used pictographs and ideographs.- Pictographs are characters that stand for objects.- Ideographs join two or more pictographs to represent an idea.- Most Chinese characters represent whole words. The Chinese Language