The Yangtze winds 6,300 kilometres across China from the high Tibetan Plateau down to Shanghai, making it the longest river in Asia and the third-longest on Earth. About one in every 15 people on the planet lives in its drainage basin.
For millions of years the Yangtze was also home to the baiji, a pale freshwater dolphin sometimes called the “Goddess of the Yangtze.” But pollution, dams, and fishing wiped them out incredibly fast. A 2006 expedition couldn’t find a single one, and the species was declared functionally extinct.
The river also hosts the Three Gorges Dam, the largest power station ever built. Filling its reservoir actually slowed Earth’s rotation by a tiny fraction of a microsecond, because so much water was lifted into a higher position.
