Nearly 4,000 miles long, the Yangtze has watered civilizations for millennia—and laid waste to them too. The eighth-century poet Li Bai wrote that navigating the river was "even harder than ...

Anhui and Jiangsu as well as the city of Shanghai, finally emptying into the East China Sea. With plenty of rainfall all year round, the Yangtze River is named the golden watercourse.

By the time River Town was published in early 2001, the city’s first highway had been completed, rendering the Yangtze ferries obsolete. Two more new highways would follow, along with three ...