March 24, 2021 - Epoch Times
03:53
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| Wuhan, capital city of central China's Hebei province, is nicknamed City of Yangtze because it is the biggest city in the middle reach of the Yangtze River and situated at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers. | |
| One of eight major tributaries. | |
| That explains why when a video showing a dried-up section of the Yangtze River in Wuhan was circulated on the internet, people were shocked. | |
| They asked each other, is it real or fake news? | |
| Wuhan is known for having abundant water. | |
| In the video, the exposed riverbed is very wide, looking very much like a sandy beach. | |
| Two cars run through the riverbed, as if exploring a desert. | |
| A man who speaks Mandarin with a strong Wuhan accent explained that this place is indeed the bottom of Yangtze River. | |
| Look, how wide this mountain is. | |
| I can't see it. | |
| It's very wide. | |
| The mountain is not a usual wide mountain. | |
| But there's no water here. | |
| And here are all these rocks. | |
| So many rocks. | |
| A Chinese netizen said he had a video taken in February at the same location. | |
| The river was already dried up at the time. | |
| He reminded everyone that Wuhan experienced historically high water levels last summer. | |
| As a matter of fact, in mid-July last year, Yangtze River in Wuhan section became flooded with water levels 16 feet higher than the average ground elevation of Wuhan. | |
| A big and wide river above everyone's head in the city. | |
| Wang Weiluo, a Chinese hydraulic engineer residing in Germany, told the Epoch Times that he had verified that the video is real, as the dried section is located in the suburban area Most urban residents didn't have a chance to see it yet. | |
| Wang attributed the problem to the construction of the upstream dams, especially the Three Gorges Dam. | |
| He explained that the Chinese authorities were obsessed with building giant dams because they wanted to learn from the Soviet Union on how to control rivers by building reservoirs and dams. | |
| The idea is, during the flooding season, the reservoirs can store water. | |
| During the dry seasons, the reservoirs will release water to alleviate the drought, Wang said. | |
| However, the reality is just the opposite. | |
| During the flood season, the dams fail to block the flood and have to discharge water to downstreams, making the flooding in downstream cities even worse. | |
| In the dry season, the dams block the water for its own use, which is power generation, hence worsening the impact of drought. | |
| Wang also said, based on his observation of the video, the sand at the riverbed looks to be fresh sand, as there is no river grass on the sand at all. | |
| He suspects that the flood last summer brought huge amounts of sand downstream. | |
| Before the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, China's hydraulic engineers had warned that the dam would gravely slow down the river and sediment would become a serious problem. | |
| So far, Chinese state media has remained silent on the big news that a section of Yangtze River has completely dried up in Wuhan. | |
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