The Huangshui River or Huang Shui is a river in

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

and Gansu, China. The river is a left tributary of the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...

and its total length is with a basin area of .

Etymology

The Huangshui River () is also referred to simply as Huang River () in China. The river was formerly romanized as the Hwong-Choui. In

Amdo Tibetan Amdo Tibetan (; also called ''Am kä'') is the Tibetic language spoken in Amdo (now mostly in Qinghai, some in Ngawa and Gannan). It has two dialects, the farmer dialect and the nomad dialect. Amdo is one of the three branches of traditional c ...

, the Huangshui is known as the Tsong Chu.

History

The Huangshui River valley has long been important as a route between Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian cultures. As one of the few fertile valleys on the northeast edge of the

Qinghai-Tibet Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Tib ...

, the river's basin has supported agriculture for various

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

and

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

civilizations including the

Majiayao culture The Majiayao culture was a group of neolithic communities who lived primarily in the upper Yellow River region in eastern Gansu, eastern Qinghai and northern Sichuan, China. The culture existed from 3300 to 2000 BC. The Majiayao culture represen ...

Qijia culture The Qijia culture (2200 BC – 1600 BC) was an early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. It is regarded as one of the earliest bronze cultures in China. T ...

Xindian culture Xindian culture () was a Bronze Age culture in the Gansu and Qinghai provinces of China. Xindian culture is dated ca. 1500–1000 BCE, a radiocarbon testing of an artefact produced a date around 1000 BCE,''Cihai'' ("Sea of Words"), Shanghai c ...

, and Kayue culture. Huangshui's valley was also one of the routes utilized by travelers on the

Northern Silk Road The Northern Silk Road is an ancient trackway in northern China originating in the early capital of Xi'an and extending north of the Taklamakan Desert to reach the ancient kingdoms of Parthia, Bactria and eventually Persia and Rome. It is the nor ...

. The city of

Xining Xining (; ), alternatively known as Sining, is the capital of Qinghai province in western China and the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. The city was a commercial hub along the Northern Silk Road's Hexi Corridor for over 2000 years, and w ...

formed on the Huangshui due to its strategic importance.

Geography

The Huangshui River, in name, is a short river that rises in

's Daban Mountains in Haiyan County, Haibei. The river flows east through

and

Haidong Haidong (; Wylie: Haitung) is a prefecture-level city of Qinghai province in Western China. Its name literally means "east of the (Qinghai) Lake." On 8 February 2013 Haidong was upgraded from a prefecture () into a prefecture-level city. Haido ...

before joining with the

just upstream from Lanzhou. The Huangshui's primary tributary, the

Datong River The Datong River (), known as the Julak Chu in Amdo Tibetan, is a river in China in the Yellow River basin. It has a total length of , and a basin area of . It has an average annual flow of 90.5 cubic meters per second. It was previously spelled T ...

, is actually longer in length than the Huangshui and thus forms the

main stem In hydrology, a mainstem (or trunk) is "the primary downstream segment of a river, as contrasted to its tributaries". Water enters the mainstem from the river's drainage basin, the land area through which the mainstem and its tributaries flow.. A ...

. The Datong and Huangshui meet on the Qinghai-Gansu border between Minhe and Honggu.

References

Rivers of Qinghai Tributaries of the Yellow River {{China-river-stub