Astral Codex Ten

Yellow River

3 min read

Yellow River

Article

Yellow River is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 21, 2021 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “the Yellow is not navigable”; “When the Yellow River burst its dikes in 1587”; “after drunkenly falling into the Yellow River during a fishing expedition”. It most often appears alongside China, Egypt, Europe.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 21, 2021
  • Last seen: August 19, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
Its geographic disadvantages are apparently numerous. China lacks much in the way of navigable rivers (“the Yellow is not navigable—in part due to its heavy engineering”) and frequent, heavy flooding and droughts on the North China Plain require strong irrigation efforts. The stunted trade that follows from these features – and the mass labor that it takes to make agriculture here work – has traditionally kept China from accumulating capital, much less industrializing. The Yangtze River in central China could provide that capital (Zeihan calls it “China’s sole navigable river”), but it’s seasonal and shallow and mountainous. It contributes to a “fractured nature” of central China that “complicate[s] northern China’s always vexing problem of internal disunity.”
Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance
August 19, 2022 · Original source
Shen had more mixed success in handling practical matters outside the realm of the literary bureaucracy. When the Yellow River burst its dikes in 1587, Shen did well overseeing the mitigation and rebuilding efforts, exerting his political influence to ensure that the best qualified people were chosen to lead the operation. On the other hand, also in 1587, Shen judged that a disagreement between a governor and a district director in China's northeastern province was a matter of no significance (like everything else that year) and ignored their dispute. This was a mistake. The governor and district director held opposite views on how to deal with a certain troublesome border chieftain named Nurhaci.
Inline links: Yellow River
He took a great interest in the military, riding with his troops and even engaging in combat against the Mongols. But he left no heir when he died, after drunkenly falling into the Yellow River during a fishing expedition.