Do you know why the Yellow River basin is called
the Cradle of Chinese Civilization?

Ever since I was a child I heard people referred to the Yellow River basin as the cradle of Chinese civilization. Indeed, historically, all early major dynasties emerged from its middle basin along the Wei River valley near the present city Xi'an. However, I was never given a reason why that was the case. Certainly the Yangtze River valley was equally adequate, if not better, to support an agricultural society. Why then didn't the Chinese civilization spring from the Yangtze River valley? Why did the Yellow River basin become the cradle of Chinese civilization?

Such questions remained enigmas in my mind for over half a century, until a few years ago after I visited the "cradle," when a very unusual feature caught my eyes. I think I now know the reason, which I shall share with you. Please give me your suggestion if you think otherwise.

It has something to do with the terrain in the Yellow River basin, the terrain of the loess plateau. (Many articles in this Home Page refer to the loess plateau, and the more you understand the nature of the loess plateau the better you'll appreciate the emphases in these articles.)

The loess plateau in the Yellow River basin extends for an area of 43,000 sq km (about 2/3 the size of Texas) lying mainly in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu. For the most part, the loess plateau is badly dissected by gullies due to erosion, and its features are generally referred to as qian shan wan he (thousands of hills and ten folds more gullies). Transportation is so prohibitive within such a terrain, it simply cannot facilitate the emergence of a viable society. Together with its arid climate, its agricultural productivity is at best marginal even for a primitive society. Why then did a superior dynastic society spring from here four thousand years ago?

The answer lies in a certain landform called tai yuan , a sort of tableland on a plateau, unknown anywhere else on earth. Tai yuan represents an original state of the loess plateau before it is totally carved up by erosion. There are still several pieces of such tai yuans in existence today, mostly in the western part of the Wei River valley along the border between Shaanxi and Gansu. They are ideal for agricultural production as well as community activities. Today county governments are still located on tai yuans, even though some of them have been reduced to very small sizes from incessant erosion. [The first picture shows an edge-on view of a piece of tai yuan with sharp drops at the edges, and the second picture shows the flat tableland on the surface of the tai yuan.]

A few thousand years ago, the tai-yuan landform must be even more extensive and better connected, so that it facilitated unrestricted transportation. In the classic novel San Guo Yan Yi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), the "bad guy" Dong Zhuo, commander of 200,000 troops at the Xi Liang garrison, marched his troops all the way to Luo Yang to hold the Han emperor hostage. Xi Liang is in Gansu along the silk route, over a thousand kilometers west of Luo Yang. How was Dong Zhuo able to march such a huge army over such difficult terrain? There was only one way -- through the connected tai yuans. This minor historical tidbit gives you some idea how important the tai yuan could be to facilitate communication. (A different route was taken in the Long March, and what hardship greeted the wayward trekkers!)

I visited Jingchuan in Gansu. Jingchuan is situated by the Jing River, and its activities center around the river, 200 meters below the height of a normal tai yuan. It has nevertheless a small piece of tai yuan at a hill top, on which I was shown the remanent of an ancient garrison. It was just a small pile of earth now, amid a field of corn. Next to it a small dirt road was still in use. But, 1800 years ago, Dong Zhuo's mighty army might have rested here, on its way to commit the infamous act of usurping the throne from a young emperor.

The so-called "cradle of Chinese civilization" cuddled people and events much earlier than those of the Three Kingdoms however, to the time of the legendary Yellow Emporor Huang Di, about 4000-5000 years ago. The Banpo Museum outside Xi'an preserved the remains of a sequence of neolithic societies from 6000-9000 years ago. Chinese anthropologists consider them to be matriarchal societies adopting a communal way of life, which was imposed on the inhabitants not by choice but from scarcity. There was bearly enough food provision to last from one year to another, and the society was not given the luxuary to operate in any other way but to share equally.

There was plenty of evidence to support such an interpretation, thanks to the preservation provided by the exceptional wind-blown deposit which was also responsible for the formation of the loess plateau. I visited the Banpo Muesum in 1973, and I was shown burial sites whose pattern indicated that each individual grave of a female person was accompanied by three pieces of burial artifects, of pottery utensils, without distinction to the person's status before death.

After the early matriarchal societal structure was replaced by the patriarchal structure, rapid rise in agricultural productivity made available food surplus for the first time in the history of mankind. This happened around 4000-5000 years ago. Some burial sites of that period show a pattern with a male person in the center surrounded by two female persons, one on each side, resting on their sides facing the male person. Clearly, many powerful households of the time acquired significant private possessions.

With rising food surplus, more and more tribes could prosper through plundering, by pillaging villages after harvest, rather than participating in productive activities (somewhat like the Vikings in the West). I believe Huang Di headed one such marauding tribe, for his tribe did not remain at a single site but wandered all over the present North China plain.

Huang Di came originally from Shandong, and all of the famous tribal battles that he allegedly fought were located in the present North China plain which at the time was part of Yellow River's flood plain. This shows that the wealth over the plain was abundant. We now attribute Huang Di's grave to be somewhere in the loess plateau at a site not far from Xi'an, over a thousand kilometers from all of his victorious battles. Why did he come here, and why was he willing to abandon the abundant plain to settle in a hilly region?

The answer lies in the landform of the tai yuan. The steep slopes on the two sides of a tai yuan provided its inhabitants favorable defensive advantages. It was almost impossible for enemies to attack from the slopes because the terrain there would be hostile to the delivery of logistics. Frontal attacks were limited to the two ends of the tai yuan, which could easily be defended at the narrow necks.

Huang Di, after occupying one such favorable tai-yuan site, decided to settle down and abandoned the marauder's way of life. Because of the favorable security afforded by the terrain, the political structure established by Huang Di was allowed to prosper for numerous generations of successors, and eventually blossomed into the flower of the early Chinese civilization.

Other tribal systems rooted in the North China plain, and elsewhere, were not endowed with the element of longevity. Even some brilliant leaders there would bring their tribes to high glory, their achievements could not be preserved for over a generation, and their political inventions, however magnificent they might be, scattered into the wind - together their remains - never to be seen again.

With time, walled cities were built, and communities no long relied on the tai yuan for protection. Descendants of Huang Di began to move away from the loess plateau to occupy more favorable sites (in terms of production and transportation), as a result of population explosion, bringing with them their superior political skills which they acquired through several hundred years of uninterrupted practice. They gave birth to a glorious civilization on the face of the earth. The Chinese people forever grateful for such a gift from Huang Di call themselves the descendants of Huang Di (regardless if any trace of Huang Di's DNA can be found in their genes)!

For myself, I have a feeling I am not part of the Huang Di's stock. Being a southerner (of China) bearing features of the Polynesians, very possibly I belong to the stock of the ocean people. It doesn't matter - my heart rests with the loess plateau where Huang Di once called home.

Picture source: George Leung (1999).