Manhao () 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 ...

Gejiu (, ; Hani: ''Goqjef''; formerly known as Kochiu) is a county-level city and the former capital of Honghe prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, and has 202,000 urban inhabitants (ranked 14th largest city in Yunnan). It is the site of the country's ...

County-level city A county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a Administrative divisions of China#County level (3rd), county-level administrative divi ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

Province of China.

History

Located on the Red River, Manhao was a transhipment point of some significance prior to construction of the Kunming–Hai Phong Railway in the early 20th century, as the shortest route between

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

and

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

ran through it. Manhao was considered the head of small-boat (junk, or ''wupan'' 五版) navigation on the Red River; so Yunnan's products such as

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

would be brought to Manhao by pack mules, where they would be loaded to boats. In those days, to travel from

Hai Phong Haiphong ( vi, Hải Phòng, ), or Hải Phòng, is a major industrial city and the third-largest in Vietnam. Hai Phong is also the center of technology, economy, culture, medicine, education, science and trade in the Red River delta. Haiphong wa ...

(which was the closest sea port to Kunming) to Kunming, one would need 28 days: it involved 16 days of travel by steamer and then a small boat up the Red River to Manhao (), and then 12 days overland () to Kunming.

Economy

The

Madushan Dam The Madushan Dam is a gravity dam on the Honghe (Red) River in Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province. The name of the dam comes from the nearby village of Madushan, located on the left bank of the river upstream from the dam ...

is located a few kilometers upstream from Manhao; the dame is named after the nearby Madushan Village. Two bridges span the Red River in Manhao. The high Manhao Bridge is a few kilometers upstream from the town; it carries Yunnan State Route 212 (S212). Another, low, bridge is in the town itself. The Red River around Manhao is not navigable for modern commercial ships (and the Madushan Dam, upstream of the town, has no

ship lock A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water lev ...

), but numerous dredges, both upstream and downstream from Manhao, extract sand from its bottom for use in construction.

References

{{coord, 23, 01, 05, N, 103, 20, 51, E, display=title Township-level divisions of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture

History

Economy

See also

References