Yellow River Map
| Yellow River Map (He Tu) | |||||||||
河圖
River Scheme |
|||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 河图 | ||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Hétú | ||||||||
| Literal meaning | Yellow River's Map/Diagram/Plan | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Hétú |
| Wade–Giles | Ho Tu |
The Yellow River Map, Scheme, or Diagram (河圖, with variants for the second character) is an ancient Chinese concept. It is related to the Lo Shu Square. The origins of the two from the rivers Luo and He are part of Chinese mythology. The development of the two are part of Chinese philosophy. (Wu:52)
The Yellow River or Huang He is the second-longest river in Asia, following the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest in the world. The Yellow River has an estimated length of 5,464 km (3,395 mi). It has been and remains an important factor for human habitability of northern China. Anciently, it was often referred to just as He or "the River", and thus the Yellow River Map, just as "River Map" or "River Plan". The Yellow River has changed its course, settling in new beds, with different outlets to the ocean, many times in the past, often accompanied by death and devastation to the human population. Flowing through the yellow loess soil deposited as a deep, packed dust across much of northern China, it gets its name from the yellow color of resulting suspended solids. The Lo, or Luo, River is a major tributary.
Myths of the Yellow River Map go back to earliest stages of the recorded history of Chinese culture.
The Great Flood of China, also known as the "Gun-Yu myth" (Yang:74), was a major flood event that continued for at least two generations, which resulted in great population displacements among other disasters, such as storms and famine: according to mythological and historical sources, it is traditionally dated to the third millennium BCE, during the reign of the Emperor Yao. Treated either historically or mythologically, the story of the Great Flood and the heroic attempts of the various human and other characters to control it and to abate the disaster is a narrative fundamental to Chinese culture. Among other things, the Great Flood of China is important to understanding the history of the founding of both the Xia Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty, it is also one of the main flood motifs in Chinese mythology, and it is a major source of allusion in Classical Chinese poetry. Various divine or heroic persons or beings contributed to control or in some cases worsen the flooding, including the mysterious bird-turtles of the Heavenly Questions of the Chuci. One of the main (if not the main) rivers involved according to tradition was the Yellow River, and one of the keys to the eventual successful efforts to control the flood waters is traditionally the Yellow River Map.
...
Wikipedia