The Great Chinese flood

while the US is busy watching white SJW burn Bibles, or rather not watching it because outside of RT it's being ignored, the floods continue in China (and India, and Japan, and Bangladesh).

so then you have this absurd article on how China's "natural" solutions have made the floods less than they were in 1998 (they planted trees to lower the flood waters.

Following the 1998 floods, the government convinced 2.4 million people to leave the Yangtze River floodplains, restoring 1,000 square miles.

and don't forget the dams:

China has invested billions into building dams on the Yangtze and its tributaries to help regulate floodwaters. Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2006, helped regulate water flow this year by over 30%, according to Chinese state media. The project was controversial partly because it required the forced relocation of 1.3 million people.

The article is touting the wonderfulness of all of this, as if it were new, and blames climate change for the floods.

But the dirty little secret is that China has been fighting flooding for thousands of years.

Sorry for the source, but this article by Glenn Beck is a good summary of 20th century floods in China, including what this means to the average Yank.

the history of Wuhan goes back 3500 years: Wikipedia article.

Indeed, whenever one reads anything about China, one has to remember their 3500 year history is part of the present day story: Even the attempt of Xi to reform and control China (including his moves against dangerous ideas and various religions) has happened before under previous emperors.

Wikipedia: The Great Flood which occurred about 5000 years ago:

Treated either historically or mythologically, the story of the Great Flood and the heroic attempts of the various human characters to control it and to abate the disaster is a narrative fundamental to Chinese culture. Among other things, the Great Flood of China is key to understanding the history of the founding of both the Xia dynasty and the Zhou dynasty, it is also one of the main flood motifs in Chinese mythology, and it is a major source of allusion in Classical Chinese poetry.

Flood mythology

wikipedia links to articles about floods in China.




The Water Kingdom is the history of China's irrigation system.

Water is a key that unlocks much of Chinese history and thought. The ubiquitous relationship that the Chinese people have had with water has made it an enduring metaphor for philosophical thought and artistic expression. From the Han emperors to Mao, the ability to manage the waters — to provide irrigation and defend against floods — became a barometer of political legitimacy, and attempts to do so have involved engineering works on a gigantic scale.

Scribd link.

a lot of this is just posting links for me to read later. 

But what brought up my interest in researching the history of China's flooding problems was a comment in the latest novel I read, the Ginger Tree, (miniseries HERE), which is mainly about Japan, but early on, the young Scots lady made a comment about being in danger of sudden death living in China, and her more experienced expat pointed out that a few years before she landed that there had been major floods in Wuhan that had killed a million people.

Sigh.

so when you read articles hyperventillating about the problems there, remember that for China, it's not a new problem, and the Xi government might very well rise or fall depending on their ability to help the locals affected by this natural disaster.