Excessive extraction of groundwater and the overdevelopment of coal mines in the surrounding areas led to the drying up of ...

Du Fu (712-770 AD) is regarded by many Chinese as their greatest poet. He was well known in his day, and made friends with other poets such as Li Bai, another famous poet in the Tang dynasty.

The eighth-century poet Li Bai wrote that navigating the river was "even harder than climbing the sky." The 20th-century novelist Pearl S. Buck dubbed it "the wildest, wickedest river" for its ...