As part of their China Green project, Asia Society has released a new documentary about the Yellow River. Watch it here:
The Yellow River, also known as “China’s Sorrow,” often doesn’t reach the sea. Once the source of devastating floods that plagued generations of Chinese, the river is now running dry. In response, the Chinese government is replumbing the country to bring water from the wet south to the arid north.
As the Chinese saying goes, “when you drink the water, think about its source.” The signs of water scarcity in the Yellow watershed can be traced all the way to its headwaters in Qinghai, the meltwater of glaciers on the slopes of the sacred spirit mountain Anyemaqen (Ah-nyi MAH-chin).
The warming climate has put enormous extra pressure on this corner of the Tibetan Plateau, threatening to make unsustainable the traditional Tibetan way of life. Continued warming holds grave implications for hundreds of millions of people across the lower altitudes of northern China whose livelihoods depend on the Yellow’s water.
China Green has also launched a new website called On Thinner Ice: Disappearing Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau.
