The 437-kilometer-long Lijiang River, a branch of the Pearl
River, runs from the Mao'er Mountains north of Guilin through
Yangshuo and Pinle to Wuzhou, where it joins the Xijiang River.
A trip along the Lijiang is one of the highlights of a holiday
in China. From Guilin to Yangshuo, the river meanders through 83
kilometers of beautiful countryside, with bamboo forests, dense
reed-beds and spectacular rock formations.
But the water in the Lijiang has been unusually low since
November, with some sections even drying up completely. The water
level fell to its lowest point since 1950, and only 10 kilometers
of the river sightseeing cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo was open in
February. Those wishing to see the river had to go on foot.
Moderate to heavy rainfall in March brought the water back up,
enabling regular waterway traffic to resume at the end of the
month.
The water in the Lijiang began to rise on March 18, and has now
reached 141.6 meters with a flow of 122 cubic meters per second,
according to Huang Kun'an, chief of the River Condition Department
of the Guilin Hydrology Monitoring Station.
The unusually low levels of the river this winter are directly
attributed to scant rainfall during the latter half of 2003.
By December 3, 2003, the water in the Lijiang had dropped to
140.5 meters with the flow rate down to 11 cubic meters per second,
a rare phenomenon during the past 50 years. By January 9 of this
year, the flow rate had dropped to only 8.5 cubic meters per
second. The Law of Navigation Management required that navigation
be suspended.
But the Lijiang river cruise is one of the most popular tours in
the country, and suspending navigation would hit the tourism market
hard. The local government launched an emergency initiative to keep
the cruises going.
The Qingshitan Reservoir was down to 205.7 meters and holding
only 59.5 million cubic meters of water, 100 million cubic meters
less than usual. Supplying the Lijiang was considered so important
that water normally dedicated to crop irrigation was used to refill
the river instead.
But it was not only the lack of rainfall that caused the Lijiang
River to run dry.
The forest coverage on the Mao'er Mountains steadily fell from
the 1950s to the 1990s. Forested area, which accounted for some
40,000 hectares in 1958, had plummeted to 17,700 hectares by 1980.
That year, a reforestation program was implemented and now the
amount of forested land has risen back up to 30,800 hectares.
But the new tree coverage cannot undo all the damage that was
done. The land was badly eroded, and now no longer able to hold the
water, floods are frequent during the rainy season while the dry
seasons grow longer and longer. Since the latter half of the 1990s,
dry-season suspension of navigation has been extended by one to
three months.
Even now, economic development is still based on traditional
exploitation of the local forest. The number of lumber mills
continues to creep up, while loggers threaten the protected
zones.
Excessive and poorly planned development of the tourism industry
is another factor.
In recent years, countless restaurants have opened their doors
along the riverside, even in the more remote locations. The larger
tourist attractions consume enormous amounts of water in their
operations.
The Lijiang River is unparalleled for its beauty, and the tour
and travel trade there is vitally important to the area's economic
development. Yet stopgap measures will not solve the problems the
Lijiang is experiencing now: viable long-term solutions must be
found.
(China.org.cn by Wang Zhiyong, April 5, 2004)