Huayuankou

Huayuankou

Huayuankou is located on the South Bank of the Yellow River 17 kilometers away from the north suburb of Huiji District, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. According to folklore, it was not called Huayuankou at first. In the Ming Dynasty, Tianguan Xu built a garden here, covering an area of 540 mu. It planted flowers and trees all the year round, blooming all the year round. Men and women from far and near competed for sightseeing. Later, the Yellow River rolled South and changed its course. The torrential flood engulfed this beautiful garden. Since then, it has become a ferry on the South Bank of the Yellow River, which is called Huayuankou by the masses.

During the Anti Japanese war on June 9, 1938, the situation was urgent. In order to stop the Japanese army, Chiang Kai Shek blew up the Yellow River dyke at Huayuankou, causing the artificial breach of the dyke and diversion of the Yellow River, and drowning nearly one million people at Huayuankou. So the entrance to the garden is famous.

Legend

It is said that many years ago, the Yellow River made a decision here. It took years to plug the breach. Many of the people who blocked the mouth and built the dyke were victims of the disaster. They had been homeless for a long time. When the Yellow River water was blocked, some of them simply did not leave and lived in the temporary thatched cottage built when the dyke was blocked. They started farming here, got married and raised their children. As the population grew, they became a village called guijiazhuang. Many years later, the dry water from Xingyang flowed into the Yellow River here. In this way, more people come and go here, and it has become a lively place.

In the Ming Dynasty, there was a senior official named Xu Zan in your village, who was a senior official here. Xu Zan worked as an official for several years. He ransacked a lot of money and built a big garden at home. This large garden covers an area of five or six hundred mu. Many exotic flowers and plants are planted in it. It blooms all year round and smells fragrant. People from dozens of miles away come here to watch the flowers.

One spring, Xu Tianguan went home. Like a temple fair, guijiazhuang is crowded with old people and children to see the flowers in the Xu garden. With more people, there are more small businesses and more food sellers. Xu Tianguan's garden is in the corner of the Yellow River and the dry river. People who come to see the flowers have to cross the dry water. There is no bridge or boat on the water. It's very inconvenient to come and go. Seeing this, Xu Tianguan thought: I want to get a boat on the dry water and ferry people. It's a profitable business!

Xu Zan wanted to make a fortune, so he dug the outlet of the dry water into the Yellow River and let it flow back into the dry water. With such a dig, the dry river is wider and the water is deeper. Xu Tianguan got a big boat, found some boatman, repaired the ferry and ferried the pedestrians. People heard that with the ferry, more people came to see the flowers. In a few months, Xu Tianguan made a lot of money.

Summer is coming. As soon as the Yellow River rises, it rushes into the dry water. The water rises more and more. The Yellow River rushes to the mouth of the dry water and rolls south for a few miles, which drowns Xu Tianguan's big garden.

Later, it really became a ferry between the north and the south. When people go here, they always say: go to the garden entrance. In this way, the name of the garden entrance will be called.

Human tragedy

Huayuankou breach

Although Huayuankou is inextricably linked with historical celebrities, it has not been well-known for quite a long time. Huayuankou became famous overnight because of a great tragedy. On the levee not far west of the general dam at Huayuankou, a white boundary pillar stands. A comrade from Mangjin River Affairs Bureau, who is with him, said: "this is the western boundary pillar, and there is also an eastern boundary pillar downstream. At that time, the Kuomintang raked the entrance of Huahua garden. The width of the entrance was 1460 meters. Between the East and west boundary steles was the entrance after the garden entrance burst

Huayuankou, Zhengzhou

On the south side of the western boundary monument is a beautiful garden called "pakouchu square", where the Huayuankou monument is located. The Huayuankou monument is a black rectangular building with the words "pakou place in 1938" written on it. At the bottom of the monument are a group of large relief sculptures, which represent the miserable scene of flood and displacement of people.

According to reports, what we see now is only the base of the monument. When it was completed a few years ago, the whole monument was 12 meters high. On the top of it was a symbolic sculpture symbolizing the Yellow River's breakwaters and surging flood peaks. It is said that the effect was not ideal, so it was removed. After the beginning of the Anti Japanese War, the Japanese invaders went south along the pinghan and Jinpu roads. On May 19, 1938, Xuzhou was lost, the Japanese army invaded the west along Longhai Road, Zhengzhou was in danger, and Wuhan was shocked.

On June 9, 1938, in order to prevent the Japanese invaders from marching westward, Chiang Kai Shek adopted the method of "replacing soldiers with water" and ordered to dig the entrance of huahuayuankou. The water of the Yellow River surged out and flowed for thousands of miles. Huayuankou is famous all over the world. On June 4, 1938, when the Japanese army approached Kaifeng, Chiang Kai Shek ordered to dig a dike at Zhaokou, Zhongmou, and release water at 24 o'clock that night. Zhaokou is in the downstream of Huayuankou, about 40 kilometers away from Huayuankou. From the diaries of KMT soldiers who participated in rakou at that time, we can know that the dike excavation project met with great trouble on that day. Because the construction workers were all inexperienced soldiers, they didn't lift the levee until the morning of June 5. But because the entrance was too narrow, after two hours, it was blocked by the collapsed dike. At this time, Kaifeng was occupied and the situation was very tense. Chiang Kai Shek and Shang Zhen ordered the ministries to step up their work. The officers and men who dug the dyke kept on working day and night, and they also used explosives and mines for blasting, but in the end they failed to open the collapsed and blocked entrance.

On June 6, 1938, Liu heding, commander of the 39th army of the Kuomintang, realized that the first dike excavation had failed, so he sent another regiment to dig the dike for the second time 30 meters to the east of the first dike excavation point. At the same time, the relevant parties have made preparations for the third excavation. The site of the third dike excavation was set at Huayuankou. At 7:00 p.m. on June 7, the second dike excavation project was finally completed. However, due to the northward movement of the main stream of the Yellow River, the sandbank blocked the entrance, and the dredging failed again. Huayuankou, the protagonist of this historical tragedy, appeared. The new eighth division of the Kuomintang, with Jiang Zaizhen as its teacher, was in charge of the dyke excavation at Huayuankou. Jiang Zaizhen organized hundreds of strong soldiers into five groups and took turns digging dykes. Each of the five groups worked for two hours, lighting with truck lights and working all night. At 9:00 a.m. on June 9, 1938, the dike excavation was completed and the water began to be released. At first, the water potential was very small, and an hour later, after being scoured by the current, the gate expanded to more than ten meters wide. The next day, there was a heavy rain near Huayuankou, and the river rose sharply. The torrential yellow water poured out from Huayuankou. When the water arrived, it became a country of glory

Today, 65 years later, I am standing at the gate of Huayuankou. The sun is shining and the flowers are blooming. It's hard to recall the disastrous scene. I can't even find any trace left by the pickpocketing, except for the monuments and other memorials set up later. In the village near Huayuankou, I tried to find even the slightest bit of the news. The villagers said, "it's been a long time. People who know about it are not here." What they can tell the reporter is that the village is three meters higher than before! The surging Yellow River water rolled forward with silt, silting up all the places it passed. From then on, a geographical term "yellow flood area" symbolizing suffering has been added to the geography book.

The Yellow River flood area map of 1938

After KMT troops raked Huayuankou, the river course formed by the flood of the Yellow River became a military demarcation line, with enemy occupied areas in the East and KMT controlled areas in the West. It was the Chinese people in the lower reaches of the Yellow River who suffered a great disaster.

The surging Yellow River flows to the southeast, one along the Jialu River, through Zhongmou, Weishi, Kaifeng, Fugou, Xihua, Huaiyang and Zhoukou to Yinghe, Fuyang, Zhengyangguan to Huaihe, and the other from Zhongmou to shunwo River, Tongxu and Taikang to Bozhou, Huaiyuan to Huaihe. 44 counties and cities in Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces were flooded, 12.5 million people were affected and 890000 people died. Among them, Henan province suffered the most, 21 counties and cities, more than 9 million mu of cultivated land were flooded, and 470000 people died. When the Yellow River returned to its old course in 1947, the total population of Zhongmou, Weishi, Tongxu, Fugou, Xihua and Shangshui counties was only 38% of that before the disaster.

These are not the only disasters brought about by the opening of the flower garden. The Yellow River grabs the Huaihe River and flows into the Yangtze River, which brings successive floods to the Huaihe River area. The Yellow River brings 10 billion tons of sediment to the Huaihe River Basin, silting up the main stream and many tributaries of the Huaihe River. Every flood season, the Yellow River floods rolling south, the Huaihe River floods overflow cross flow, large areas are submerged. Huayuankou is the starting point for the Yellow River to become a suspended river on the ground, so the danger of the Yellow River starts from Huayuankou. The discharge and water level of Huayuankou is the flood control standard of the lower Yellow River.

Today's Huayuankou town is evolved from the past Huayuankou commune. It is more than 30 kilometers long from east to west and about 2.5 kilometers wide from north to south. According to reports, after the bakou incident, 80% of the land under the jurisdiction of Huayuankou town has become sandy wasteland, saline alkali land and waterlogged depression due to the flooding of the Yellow River year after year. This situation not only affects agricultural production, but also endangers dike safety. Since 1955, the people's government has built four Yellow River Diversion gates and pumping irrigation projects here, so as to lead the Yellow River water to sandy wasteland, saline alkali land and waterlogged depressions in a planned way. After years of efforts, most of the land in Huayuankou has been transformed into good farmland, and rice has been planted with the water of the Yellow River. In the past 20 years, fish farming has developed in Huayuankou. Today's Huayuankou is a real "land of fish and rice".

Consequences 1943 famine

After Huayuankou burst, the surging water of the Yellow River quickly discharged. At this time, it was the rainy season, the upper reaches of the Yellow River rose sharply, Huayuankou burst

Chinese PinYin : Hua Yuan Kou