The Fen River drains the center of Shanxi Province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. It originates in the Guancen Mountains of Ningwu County in northeast Shanxi, flows southeast into the basin of

Taiyuan Taiyuan; Mandarin pronunciation: (Jin Chinese, Taiyuan Jin: /tʰai˦˥ ye˩˩/) is the capital of Shanxi, China. Taiyuan is the political, economic, cultural and international exchange center of Shanxi Province. It is an industrial base foc ...

, and then south through the central valley of

Shanxi Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...

before turning west to join the

Yellow River The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...

west of Hejin. The Fen and the

Wei River The Wei River () is a major river in west-central China's Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. It is the largest tributary of the Yellow River and very important in the early development of Chinese civilization. In ancient times, such as in the Records ...

s are the two largest tributaries of the Yellow River. The river is long and drains an area of , 25.3% of Shanxi's area. The Fen River is the longest in Shanxi. It is also the second-longest tributary of the

. Within

, the Fen runs from north to south; the prefecture includes one-seventh of the river's course.

History

Legend

The Fen is usually identified with the said by

Sima Qian Sima Qian () was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for the ''Shiji'' (sometimes translated into English as ''Records of the Grand Historian''), a general history of China cov ...

and others to have flowed beside the home of the

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch, or Huangdi ( zh, t=黃帝, s=黄帝, first=t) in Chinese, is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. He is revered as ...

. The '' Discourses of the States'' states that the Ji was the home of the Yellow Emperor's clan before he fought the clan of Yandi (the "Flame Emperor"). Its name is identical with the surname of the royal family under the Zhou. Pulleyblank argues, however, that the supposed "Ji River" could be a later invention as "there seems to be no record of a Ji River outside the myth" of the Yellow Emperor.

Ancient

The lower Fen was part of the core area of ancient China and held the capital of the state of Jin near Houma. The river nurtured the 2500-year-old Sanjin Civilization and has since been called the "Mother River of People" in

. In

, the Fen River valley area has fertile water resource; for this reason, the Fen area has become the economic center of

province. There are two valleys of the south region of further south. One of the valleys is the Fen River valley, it had led to the

. The second valley is the Su River, which was along the north edge of Zhongtiao Mountain; and it was forming another triangular basin. The Fen River valley offered different routes of communication in Wei River valley, that both routes were open to the either side of the

Modern

Modern cities on or near the Fen from north to south are:

Linfen Linfen () is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Shanxi province, People's Republic of China, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the west. Linfen City is located in the southern part of Shanxi Province, with the remaining branches of T ...

, Houma, Hejin. Fenyang, although named after the river, is actually some 20-plus km to the west of it. As with any river that flows through a city, the Fen River added extra charm to the city of

. The construction of dams upstream, however, reduced the once-abundant flow of the river to a mere trickle, and the river bed went dry. From 1949, Chinese government built the reservoirs such as Fen River, Wenyu River, Hui River, and several other reservoirs on the tributaries of the Fen River, which ensured

city and other cities’ industrial water, and enlarged

basin and

basin's irrigation. Before the 1950s, Fen River valley's flood areas is 133,400 hectares, saline-alkali soil is 66,700 hectares. Today, due to the influence of the water conservancy facilities, the water logging is almost inexistence, huge areas of saline-alkali soil are reformed.

Surrounding Introduction

In the 1990s, the municipal government of

built artificial and removable structures across the river at different locations to create reservoirs of water for landscaping purposes. The surface area of these reservoirs amounts to 1.7 million square meters and, along with newly created

vegetation Vegetation is an assemblage of plants and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular Taxon, taxa, life forms, structure, Spatial ecology, spatial extent, or any other specific Botany, botanic ...

of 1.3 million square meters on the banks, forms the 6-kilometer long Fen River Park. The vegetation consist of 183 species trees, shrubs and other green plants. The No. 1 Fen River reservoir, built in 1960, is the biggest artificial reservoir in

province; it is also the scenic spot in the province. The length from south to north is 15 kilometers, the width is 5 kilometers, the total area is 32 square kilometers, and the capacity of reservoir is 720 million cubic meters. In 2000, the No. 2 Fen River Reservoir was built about 50 kilometers downstream the No. 1 Fen River Reservoir. The pollution of Fen River reservoir has become a serious problem. Because of the rise of population and the development of economy, the industrial, domestic, and other kinds of pollution have been on the rise. Great quantities of sewage are indiscriminately discharged into the riverbed downstream of the No. 1 and 2 reservoirs. However, the government is trying to fix the problem.Falke, Matthias. “The Fen River in Taiyuan, China: Ecology, Revitalization, and Urban Culture.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Autumn 2016), no. 17. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society https://doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7679

References

Citations

Bibliography

* . {{Coord, 35.263, N, 110.391, E, source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title Rivers of Shanxi Tributaries of the Yellow River