People on the lower Yellow River turned to dykes against floods very early. At the Kuiqiu covenant of 651 BCE, Duke Huan of Qi and the other lords agreed not to use dykes to hold water back and flood their neighbours, which shows that the states on the lower river were already widely building dykes in the Spring and Autumn period.
In 69 CE (Yongping 12 of the Eastern Han), Wang Jing took the river in hand and built a great levee of more than a thousand li from Xingyang to the sea, and the channel then stayed stable for several centuries.
In the Wanli reign of the Ming, Pan Jixun, who had charge of the river, put forward "confine the water to scour the silt": narrow levees and distant levees keep the water in one channel and make the river wash out its own silt.
Levees, diversion and confining the water to scour the silt are the methods of river control this class brings together. Individual works and people are entered separately.
Yellow River Harnessing is the class in the chapter on Infrastructure on the management of the Yellow River. It covers the levees, diversions and "confine the water to scour the silt" with which the river has been managed from the Spring and Autumn period to today: dykes hold the water in, channels draw off its force, and the current is then used to wash out the silt on the bed. It is about the methods of river control, not the river itself.
