Yuan River

The Yuan River (沅江) is one of the four great rivers of Hunan and its second largest, rising in the Miao Mountains of Guizhou and running 1,033 kilometres — 568 of them inside Hunan — northeast along the Xuefeng range to enter Dongting Lake at Changde. It was the historical road into western Hunan and eastern Guizhou, navigable to large vessels as far as Changde and to boats above; its basin of nearly 90,000 square kilometres fed Changde's old trade in rice, cotton, tung oil and timber. Today thousand-ton ships work its lower reaches, Hunan's largest hydropower station dams its downstream course, and the river's city front carries Changde's flood wall.