Chang Jiang (Yangtze) River

At 3,937 mileslong, the Chang Jiang is the third-longest river in the world and the longest river in Asia. It has its source some 16,000 feet high in the Kunlun Mountains, and flows across seven Chinese provinces (Qinghai, Yuanan, Sichuan, Hubei, Auhui, and Juangsui) before it empties into the East China Sea, just north of Shanghai. With more than 700 rivers and streams flowing into the main channel of the Chang Jiang, the river system drains more than 695,000 square miles.

It deposits about 6 billion cubic feet of silt onto its floodplain, where about half of the foodstuffs consumed by China's billion-plus people are grown, including a large percentage of the nation's rice, wheat, barley, corn, and beans. Some 350,000 million Chinese live on lands ...