The mother river of the Chinese nation

Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

The Yellow River flows through the Loess Plateau, taking away a huge amount of sediment, and the natural evolution of thousands of years has profoundly affected human life in the Great River Basin, generating the imprint of civilization that continues to this day.

Yanchuan is located in the northern part of Shaanxi Province, the northeast of Yan'an City, and the west bank of the Yellow River. The famous Yellow River Qiankun Bay is located in Yanchuan County, which is a 320-degree turn formed when the Yellow River flows through the Qinjin Gorge of Yanchuan For 68 kilometers.

Photo by Li Feng

Great rivers and plateaus:

Shaping the landscape of early China

The Yellow River formed relatively late, and it was only at the end of the Late Pleistocene that various geographical obstacles were overcome to achieve eventual penetration and flow eastward into the sea. However, the area where the Yellow River is located has played a very early and important role in the evolution of human culture. The Yellow River is the result of the continuous uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the shaping of geographical environment changes, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is one of the main forces influencing the early human migration route from Africa to East Asia and the formation of China's topographical, geographical and climatic environment. The Tibetan Plateau is also the birthplace of the Yangtze River, the Lancang-Mekong River, the Nu-Salween River, and the Indus River and ganges river that gave birth to ancient Indian civilization. Observing the formation and development of the Yellow River and the Chinese nation, we should look at it in conjunction with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The formation process of the Chinese nation is the result of the continuous integration of different ancient humans in East Asia and even the entire Eurasian continent where China is located for 2 million years. Contemporary research shows that after modern Homo sapiens went out of Africa, one of them marched east along the coastline of East Africa-Southwest Asia-South Asia-Southeast Asia, and landed in Oceania from Southeast Asia across the sea about 50,000 years ago, and continued to branch deep inland or continue to coastal north, and finally met modern Homo sapiens in Northeast Asia who came along the grassland road a little later, and exchanged and integrated genes, technology and other aspects of communication with other ancient humans. The early foundations of the two major cultural plates of East Asia, which include the ocean-facing and inland-facing east Asia of present-day China. After their millions of years of accumulated stone knowledge, stone tool technology and concepts, they formed a unique oriental jade culture with a strong sense of life, the first to invent pottery, and earlier gave birth to the two native agricultural cultures of the South Rice and North Valley.

The geomorphological geography of eurasia shaped by the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the unique East Asian monsoon model made early human migration necessary to choose two different paths along the coast or along the inland grassland, objectively forming a geographical and cultural crescent from the Heilongjiang River Basin in northeast China to the periphery of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the southwest, where various populations and cultural factors facing the ocean and inland were intertwined and enriched. The middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in this area, around 9,000 years ago, realized the collision and mixing of the two major agricultural cultures of the South Rice and North Valleys, forming a strong cultural hub, and by about 7,000 years ago, it took the lead in nurturing the Yangshao culture with a variety of grain agriculture such as millet, millet and rice as the main economic basis, and with the help of the favorable opportunity of the Holocene Warm Period, it continued to expand rapidly along the valley of the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River to the Loess Plateau and even the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which had a strong radiating impact on the surrounding areas. The formation and expansion of Yangshao culture laid the foundation for the Sino-Tibetan language family, including Chinese.

Yellow River and Loess:

The cradle of Chinese civilization

Archaeological findings show that the transformation of "Longshanization" in various places in the post-Yangshao period was actually at the end of the Holocene warm period and the climate turned cold. This has triggered adaptive adjustments and fierce collisions and integrations of different ethnic groups in various regions. Relying on the advantages of population size and geographical environment laid by the Yangshao period, the Central Plains region fully absorbed advanced cultural factors from all over the world, especially after the introduction of wheat, cattle, sheep and horses and metallurgical technology, and finally formed an early dynastic state that surpassed other regional cultures, and was in a leading position in the process of civilization and national evolution in East Asia.

Early texts summarize this early stage of ethnic interaction as a historical narrative of the formation of Chinese civilization of the "Three Emperors and Five Emperors" and the "Xia Shang Zhou". Archaeological findings can also roughly determine that the Yangshao culture centered on the Huashan Mountains in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the Erlitou culture centered on the Song Mountains in western Henan may be the key spatio-temporal nodes in the formation of the Chinese cultural tradition in the early East Asian lands on the basis of the two major plates facing the sea and facing the inland and the interaction circle of early China. Later, the "merchants (Yin people)" of the Shang Dynasty, the "Zhou people" of the Zhou Dynasty continued to lead the overlapping integration of the Zhou neighboring ethnic groups, and the "Qin people" and later "Tang people" after Qin Shi Huang unified the entire early East Asian agricultural interaction circle, are all nicknames for the Chinese nation at different stages of evolution. The surrounding minority groups, especially the nomadic people in the north, continue to join and integrate, and have also become an organic part of the snowballing growth of the Chinese nation today. Among them, the great agricultural explosion and expansion in the Yangshao period have the foundational significance in terms of cultural traditions such as population and language.

The reason why several ancient civilizations were born in the great river basin is because the river valley is not only related to the origin of early farming, but also naturally has the environmental diversity and easy development of the northern temperate zone, and when the agricultural society is further developed, these large river valleys have the advantages of irrigation and navigation, and soon form a strong resource aggregation effect, realize population explosion, industrial division of labor and social expansion, and eventually lead to the emergence of urban and national civilizations. The Yellow River is like a ribbon, with the meltwater of the snowy mountains of the plateau as the source, and the large amount of sediment carried in the process of rushing into the sea accumulates to form a vast North China Plain. This geographical environment pattern determines the geographical expanse of the interaction between early Chinese cultures, the diversity of ethnic groups, economies and settlement forms, and the openness and inclusiveness in the process of interaction. Thus, the Yellow River has endowed the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization with distinctive characteristics such as tenacity, inclusiveness and continuous continuity.

The Loess Plateau in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River has the characteristics of self-fertilization and easy reclamation, and the deep tributaries and valleys have long become the fertile soil for the prosperity of Yangshao culture compound grain agriculture; while the alluvial plains that are constantly accumulating downstream, although they are plagued by frequent flooding, can increasingly expand their farming space as the cradle of civilization, providing a unique environmental stage for the snowball-like growth and expansion mechanism of the Chinese nation after the formation of the core of Chinese civilization. When the Grand Canal connected the rivers entering the sea centered on the Yellow River in eastern China, the Chinese civilization realized the final integration of the two major plates facing the sea and facing the inland, so that the Chinese civilization got rid of the fate of the ancient civilizations that gradually declined due to environmental constraints, and continued to climb to the peak of new civilizations.

A cultural history of the Yellow River contains an open, inclusive and sustainable code for the formation of Chinese civilization, reflecting the inevitability of the formation of a pluralistic and integrated community of the Chinese nation and the general trend of the development of a community with a shared future for mankind.

(The author is a researcher at the China Academy of Cultural Heritage and a member of the Expert Advisory Committee on the Construction of National Cultural Parks)