Introduction: At about 4 p.m. on January 13, 1954, the people living along the Yangtze River in Taixing County (now Taixing City) in Jiangsu Province were surprised to find that the Yangtze River, which was rough on weekdays, suddenly stopped flowing. Boats stranded on the bare beach until more than two hours later, when the "vanished" river waters re-flowed down and everything returned to normal.
The Yangtze River is the largest river in China, far surpassing other rivers such as the Yellow River in terms of length, basin area, and total water resources. Especially in terms of water flow, although the Yellow River is the second longest river, it is less than one-twentieth of the total water volume of the Yangtze River.
As the two largest rivers in China, the Yangtze River and the Yellow River both originate from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the "roof of the world", and then one flows southeast through the southwest and Jiangnan regions, and the other flows to the northwest, flowing through the Gobi Desert, the Loess Plateau and the Central Plains.
The completely different river basin environment makes the water flow of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River very different. The Yangtze River mainly flows through the southern region with abundant precipitation, with abundant water; the Yellow River mainly flows through the northern region where precipitation is scarce, and the amount of water is scarce. Especially after the 1970s, due to population growth, over-irrigation and other reasons, the Yellow River has been cut off many times.
According to statistics, in the 25 years from 1972 to 1996, the Yellow River was cut off for 19 years. By 1997, the Yellow River was further disrupted, with 226 days of interruption throughout the year, which means that almost two-thirds of the Yellow River was cut off for a year.
For the people along the coast, the disappearance and interruption of the Yellow River water is simply a strange thing. However, as the largest river in China, the Water of the Yangtze River "suddenly" disappeared and stopped flowing, but it has only happened twice in history.
In historical records, the first interruption of the Yangtze River occurred in the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1342), also in Taixing County, Jiangsu Province. At that time, many fishermen in the river were fishing, and witnessed the process of the river from existence to non-existence.
In the feudal society where science and technology were not developed, the ancients often regarded the unexplained supernatural phenomenon as a warning to the heavens, believing that someone had done something wrong, and the heavens wanted to punish the people of the netherworld. So the people along the river knelt down in horror and asked for forgiveness from heaven.
This time the Yangtze River flow lasted for two days, and on the first day, the people along the river crossed in panic, and nothing major happened. The next day, some bold people ignored the others to stop them and went down to the bottom of the river. It turned out that after the river disappeared, there were many fish and shrimp in the dry bottom of the river, which could be picked up directly without any effort. In addition, in the Yangtze River, which has never dried up for thousands of years, there are many shipwreck relics and scattered gold and silver treasures, which have become low-hanging fruit, and the first people who went down have made a small fortune.
Seeing the profits, more people poured into the bottom of the river to pick up relics. But at this moment, the raging river once again rushed down from upstream, and many people did not have time to escape, and they were swept away by the water and lost their lives.
Although this interruption incident that occurred in the Yuan Dynasty is clearly recorded in the history books, after all, it is very old, and there are often exaggerated records of supernatural phenomena in ancient history books, so they have not attracted attention. Most scholars and experts believe that this interruption of the flow is only that the Yangtze River has encountered a dry period that has not been encountered in a thousand years, and the amount of water is small, which was exaggerated by the ancients.
However, the Yangtze River cut off incident that occurred in 1954 is only more than 60 years ago, and there are still many people who witnessed this incident, and most of the residents living on both sides of the Yangtze River in Taixing have heard their ancestors mention this matter.
As China's longest, most extensive river basin and largest water flow, why did the Yangtze River stop flowing in 1954? There are only two interruptions in history, why did they occur in the Taixing section of Jiangsu Province? What is the reason behind this?
Some geographers have studied and pointed out that the Yangtze River is likely to be caused by the displacement of the Earth's plate, which is also known as "breathing movement" academically. Scholars who support this reason believe that the Taixing section of the Yangtze River is located in an uplift position where plates collided in ancient times, and in a specific period, the uplift position was damaged, sucking in the water of the Yangtze River, thus causing a brief interruption of the Yangtze River.
However, this statement was quickly rejected, because whether it is a plate collision or displacement, it will cause an earthquake, but it is recorded that there was no obvious earthquake when the Yangtze River was cut off twice, so the theory of plate collision cannot be established.
Compared with the plate collision theory, more scholars prefer the "ancient rift valley" theory. According to research, some scholars believe that there is a great rift valley formed in ancient times under the ground of China's eastern coastal area, spanning Shandong and Jiangsu provinces from north to south. Underground in the Great Rift Valley, there are many underground dark rivers crisscrossed, which occurred during the Yuan Dynasty and the Yangtze River interruption event in 1954, and the Taixing section of the Yangtze River came into contact with the underground dark river of the Great Rift Valley, resulting in the swallowing of the river water, thus causing the interruption.
Due to the large amount of sediment carried in the river water, the contact between the underground dark river and the Yangtze River will soon be blocked, so the interruption of the flow is generally short-lived and will soon recover as before. However, this is only a more reasonable explanation, as for the real cause of the Yangtze River interruption incident, it is still an unsolved mystery.
Conclusion:
In the process of studying the Yangtze River interruption event, geographers also found that the Taixing section of the Yangtze River is located exactly at the "mysterious 30° north latitude line." "As we all know, in this line of latitude, there are countless magical natural phenomena and inexplicable mysterious events, such as the Nile, Yangtze, Mississippi and other world-renowned rivers, all entering the sea in this dimension. The famous four ancient civilizations, the world's highest peak Mount Everest, the Egyptian pyramids, the Bermuda Triangle and so on are also on this magical latitude line.
I believe that with the development of science and technology, one day, people will solve the mystery of the Yangtze River. What do you think is the reason for the yangtze river interruption incident? Welcome to leave a comment!