The Zhuanglang River is a river in the central part of

Gansu Province Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

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 is a left tributary of 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 ...

. Its source is in Zhuaxixiulong in the northwest of Tianzhu (Bairi) Tibetan Autonomous County, Wuwei City, on the eastern end of the

Qilian Mountains The Qilian Mountains (), together with the Altyn-Tagh sometimes known as the Nan Shan, as it is to the south of the Hexi Corridor, is a northern outlier of the Kunlun Mountains, forming the border between Qinghai and the Gansu provinces of n ...

. The river flows from northwest to southeast through Tianzhu and

Yongdeng County Yongdeng County () is a county of Gansu Province, China, it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu. Its postal code is 730300, and its population in 2020 was 520,000 people, of which 454,000 lived ...

, with a total length of 184.8 kilometres long, and a watershed area of 4,008 km². The valley of the Zhuanglang River was the main route of the eastern part of the

Hexi Corridor The Hexi Corridor ( ), also known as the Gansu Corridor, is an important historical region located in the modern western Gansu province of China. It refers to a narrow stretch of traversable and relatively arable plain west of the Yellow River's O ...

on the ancient

Silk Road The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over , it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the ...

. Nowadays, the G30 Lianhuo Expressway, China National Highway G312 and the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway all run along the river, making it a major traffic route between

China proper China proper, also called Inner China, are terms used primarily in the West in reference to the traditional "core" regions of China centered in the southeast. The term was first used by Westerners during the Manchu people, Manchu-led Qing dyn ...

and the northwestern areas.

References

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