Huayuankou () is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Huiji District Huiji District (), formerly Mangshan District (), is one of 6 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, South Central China. Located south of the Yellow River and north of Zhongyuan and Jinshu ...

, used to be a ferry of the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

in Zhengzhou,

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is al ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It has an area of 39 square kilometers and a population of 15,000. Its name means "Flower garden mouth". , it has 8 villages under its administration.

1938 Yellow River flood

In June 1938, during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

, the

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...

troops under

Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...

intentionally broke the levees of the Yellow River near HuayuankouMark Selden, "War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century (War and Peace Library)", Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (November 22, 2003)
/ref> to slow the advance of the Japanese army. Although several thousand Japanese troops were drowned, 12 million Chinese were affected, nearly 900,000 of them dying.

Reason for breaching the dike

As the Japanese had been reported to have taken the city of

Kaifeng Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...

, many of the dikes near Zhengzhou were along the path the Japanese would take if they wanted to capture the city of

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...

. This was the triggering idea for the Nationalist troops as they pictured the Yellow River being a military tool to stop the advancement of the Japanese. The plan of attack by Chiang and his subordinates was to breach the dikes that withheld the mass amount of water from pouring into the 500-square mile area of central China. However while this long-term idea was in full swing, Chiang's dilemma stood behind the thought of the many lives that stood past the dikes. This dilemma was thought of in two ways, the first being if he were to breach the dikes then he would be spreading death, wiping hundreds of thousands of people. The other thought was if he didn't break the dikes then Wuhan would collapse within days. In all a decision was needed quickly and eventually was made as Chiang gave the orders to General Wei Rulin to blow up a dike holding the Yellow River near Henan. As this order was put in place the first few attempts stood no match for the army between June 4 and 6 1938 as the structure was too durable. While the attempts failed left and right, “hour by hour, the Japanese were moving closer.” Rana Mitter,Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,2013), 160

References

Zhengzhou Township-level divisions of Henan {{Henan-geo-stub