Flood in the Yellow River, China, 1887

The cleanup of the farm fields and the rebuilding of the dykes had to be undertaken immediately despite the approaching cold weather of winter. Farm work in this part of China is a year round activity. Furthermore, the danger of a new flood would increase once the warmer weather of the following year came around. Every person was familiar with the routine for dyke repair. Thousands of tons of earth had to be moved in wheelbarrows and, in the process of both removing the mud from their farms and rebuilding the dykes, almost all of it had to be passed from place to place by hand buckets. The stones needed for the work had to be carried in ox carts from places as far away as a hundred miles. Thousands of feet of damaged dyke were subject to constant crumbling and when wet the silt facing was slippery. From the top of the dyke the river may be forty feet below, so it is easy to imagine the amount of work that had to be done to build up the dyke to prevent any further breaches. It was a common experience for workers to see their fellow laborers lose their footing and fall to their death in the river. It was not until the early part of 1889 that the dykes were finally closed. By that time the spread of disease had added its troubles to all that had been experienced from the flood and the famine.

In ancient times, dykes would often be deliberately broken in order to flood the fields of an attacking enemy but no one was prepared for the use of that same technique in the twentieth century. In the 1930s, years before World War II began, China was invaded by Japanese soldiers in flagrant violation of international agreements and by 1938 had captured and destroyed large areas of the country. In June of that year, a large part of the Japanese army was about to march westward across the North China Plain, a few miles south of the Yellow River, in order to capture a major railway juncture. The Chinese government of that time decided that its only hope of survival was to use the age-old method of breaking the dykes. This they did and it certainly stopped the Japanese advance, but there were terrible unexpected consequences from its action. The Yellow River flooded an area of about nine thousand square miles and drowned half a million Chinese peasants. Millions of others were left homeless. The plain remained flooded until the end of World War II and the surrender of Japan, seven years later. In 1947, with help from the United Nations, China returned the Yellow River to its former channel and two million acres of farmland was once again in productive use.