Answer to One China Travel Question
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Q: What and where is the world's largest plateau? What do you think might be the major factors that influence this region's climate? What is the region's driest area?
| | A: Are you referring to the loess plateau in northwestern China? Called Huangtu Gaoyuan ("Yellow Earth Plateau"), this is the world's largest loess plateau. Loess refers to the layer of fine-grained dirt that has been windblown (from Central Asia?) and deposited on that particular region of China. This layer of alluvium has been building up for who knows how long and at places measures 60 to 70 meters in depth. Given the nature of the soil, it can be eroded by rain, ground water and other natural forces. That is how the Yellow River became what it is. As this process of deposition and erosion went on, a particular landscape took shape, featuring deep valleys and steep cliffs.
As for weather in the region, the major determining factor seems to be simply location - if one travels through the region westward, he will eventually arrives in vast deserts of West China and Central China. So essentially this is a region that lies between the dry land of Central Asia and the more temperate Central and East China.
Given its general conditions, the loess plateau is not all that suitable for human habilitation, at least not nowadays - after centuries of intensive farming, little forestation is left in the area. Partly for this reason (the lack of materials for construction), many peasants live in a particular kind of caves, caves that are dug into the vertical faces of cliffs. For quite some years before they came to power in China, the Chinese Communists led by Mao made a part of the Huangtu Gaoyuan their base. In fact, many Chinese still travel to the region and tour places such as Yan'an, the town in which Mao and his comrades lived in the 1930 and 1940s, as part of what is known in China today as "Red Tourism" - a sort of pilgrimage.
As for the driest spot in the region? Not sure, but a few counties in northern Shaanxi Province (called Anbian, Dingbian and Jingbian) rank among the poorest in China, where, among other things, there is a severe shortage of water, including drinking water - some peasants have to go miles to fetch water to cook.
Here we’re talking about the largest loess plateau in the world – about 400,000 square kilometers. If you are thinking about plateaus in general, you probably need to look elsewhere. Some people believe, for instance, the Tibetan Plateau is the largest of its kind in the world.
One good way to get some visuals of China’s loess plateau is want to check out the movie Yellow Earth, directed by Chen Kaige. The photographer of this award-winning movie Zhang Yimou. Zhang later emerged as an director even more accomplished than Chen Kaige; among the movies directed by Zhang: To Live, Red Sorghum, Raise Red Lanterns, and Hero.
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