THE YANGTZE: The River That Built and Drowned an Empire | 4K Travel Documentary

In a single summer in 1931, the Yangtze River killed an estimated 3.7 million people — the deadliest natural disaster in recorded human history. The same river cradled 8,000 years of Chinese civilization, fed every dynasty that ever ruled China, and built the soil beneath Shanghai sediment by sediment. To stop it from drowning anyone again, China constructed the largest dam ever built and moved 1.4 million people out of their homes. This is the story of the Yangtze — the longest river in Asia, the most consequential waterway in human history, and the one that built and drowned an empire. In this documentary, discover the Yangtze's 6,300-kilometer journey from a glacier on the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea — the drowned cities beneath its reservoir, the ancient cliff paths carved by tracker crews, the species driven to extinction in our lifetime, and the 2,270-year-old irrigation system on its tributary still feeding farmland today. Take a breath. Stay a while. ▶ See Travel Documentaries: IRAQ:    • IRAQ: Where Civilization Began and Buried ...   JORDAN:    • JORDAN: The Empire Carved Entirely Into St...   ▶ Subscribe:    / @whereonearth4k   #Yangtze #TravelDocumentary #Documentary #WhereOnEarth #China #ThreeGorges