Information about Mekong River

For the alcoholic beverage of the same name, see Mekhong whiskey

Mekong (Mae Nam Khong)
Láncāng Jiāng, Mae Khaung, Mènam Khong, Mékôngk, Tonle Thom, Sông Cửu Long
View of the Mekong before sunset. View of the Mekong before sunset.
Countries |	China,Myanmar,Thailand,Laos,Cambodia,Vietnam
Length |	4,350 km (0 mi)
Watershed	795,000 km (0 mi)
Discharge at	South China Sea
- average	16,000 m/s (0 ft/s)
- maximum	39,000 m/s (0 ft/s)
Source |	Lasagongma Spring
- location	Mt. Guozongmucha,Qinghai,China
- coordinates
- elevation	5,224 m (17139 ft)
Mouth	Mekong Delta
- elevation	0 m (0 ft)

The Mekong is one of the world’s major rivers. It is the 11th-longest river in the world, and the 12th-largest by volume (discharging 475 km³ of water annually). Its estimated length is 4880 km, and it drains an area of 810,000 km².^[1] From the Tibetan Plateau it runs through China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. All except China and Myanmar belong to the Mekong River Commission. A south Asian regional association, Mekong-Ganga Cooperation is named after this river. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls have made navigation extremely difficult.

Names

The river was originally named by the local Tai peoples as Mae Nam Khong, Mae Khong for short, meaning Kong River or "Mother of all rivers". This was picked up and phoneticized in the Chinese as Méigōng Hé (湄公河) for the external part, without realizing it became the "River Kong River", the same redundancy as in English. In China for most of its length it is known as the "Lancang River" (澜沧江, Láncāng Jiāng). In Burmese, it is called the Mae Khaung (ແມ່ນ້ຳຂອງ) while in Thai it is Mae Nam Khong (แม่น้ำโขง), in Laotian (ແມ່ນ້ຳຂອງ) Mènam Khong, in Cambodian Mékôngk or Tonle Thom and in Vietnamese Sông Cửu Long. In Thai, Kong (Thai: โขง) is a species of crocodile; some believe this is tone-shifted from (Thai: คค) Kod, or (Thai: โค้ง) kong, both adjectives to describe curves or meanders of a river or road.^[2]

Course

The river's source, and therefore its exact length, is uncertain, due to the existence of several tributaries in an inaccessible environment. According to the China Science Exploration Association survey, the source is the Lasagongma spring, at an altitude of 5224 metres.^[3] This spring is located on Mt. Guozongmucha, and forms the Zayaqu, which has been identified by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the headwaters of the Mekong, within northwestern China's Qinghai Province. An earlier expedition by Michel Piessel had identified the Zanaqu as the headwaters, at the Rupsa-La pass (further west, at an altitude of 4975 m).^[4] As a consequence of the difficulty in determining the location of the headwaters, figures for the Mekong's total length vary from 4350 to 4909 km.

Approximately half the river's length is in China, where it is called the Dza Chu in Tibetan in its upper course in Tibet (Chinese: 扎曲; Pinyin: Zá Qū), and more generally the Lancang in Chinese (Simplified Chinese: 澜沧江; Traditional Chinese: 瀾滄江; Pinyin: Láncāng Jiāng), meaning the "turbulent river". Much of this stretch consists of deep gorges, and the river leaves China at an altitude of only 500 meters. The entire river is known as the Meigong in Chinese (Chinese: 湄公河; Pinyin: Méigōng Hé).

The river next forms the border between Myanmar and Laos for 200 km, at the end of which it meets the tributary Ruak River at the Golden Triangle. This point also marks the division between the Upper and Lower Mekong.



The river then divides Laos and Thailand, before a stretch passing through Laos alone. It is known as Maè Nam Khong (Mother of all rivers) in both Lao and Thai (แม่น้ำโขง). The Lao stretch is characterised by gorges, rapids and depths of as little as half a meter in the dry season. It widens south of Luang Prabang, where it has been known to flood to 4 km in width and reach 100 metres in depth, although its course remains extremely inconsistent. The endangered Giant Mekong Catfish was traditionally caught in this region once yearly, following auspicious rites officiated by the quondam royal family.

The river again marks the Lao-Thai border in the stretch which passes Vientiane, followed by a short stretch through Laos alone. This includes the Si Phan Don (four thousand islands) region above the Khone Falls near the Cambodian border, where endangered dolphins can be viewed. The falls are all but impassable to river traffic.

In Cambodia, the river is called the Mékôngk or Tonle Thom (great river). The Sambor rapids above Kratie are the last to impede navigation. Just above Phnom Penh is the confluence with the Tonle Sap, the main Cambodian tributary. Below Phnom Penh, it divides into the Bassac and the Mekong proper, which both flow into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

In Vietnamese, the river as a whole is known as Mê Kông. The part flowing through Vietnam, known as Sông Cửu Long (river of nine dragons), divides into two major branches, the Tiền Giang (Front River) and Hậu Giang (Back River). These in turn enter the sea through nine estuaries, thus the Vietnamese name.

About 90 million people rely on the river. The area they live in, known as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), comprises Yunnan Province in China, Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.^[5] The main livelihood of the people of the GMS is rice production. Approximately 140,000 km² of rice are grown in the GMS.^[6] A huge number of rice varieties are grown along the Mekong. Of approximately 100,000 rice accessions in the Rice Gene Bank of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), about 40,000 come from the GMS.^[7]

History

The difficulty of navigating the river has meant that it has divided, rather than united, the people who live near it. The earliest known settlements date to 2100 BCE, with Ban Chiang being an excellent example of that early Iron Age culture. The earliest recorded civilisation was the 1st century Indianised-Khmer culture of Funan, in the Mekong Delta. Excavations at Oc Eo, near modern An Giang, have found coins from as far away as the Roman Empire. This was succeeded by the Khmer culture Chenla state by around the 5th century. The Khmer empire of Angkor was the last great Indianized state in the region. From around the time of the fall of the Khmer empire, the Mekong was the frontline between the emergent states of Siam and Tonkin (North Vietnam), with Laos and Cambodia, then situated on the coast, torn between their influence.

The first European to encounter the Mekong was the Portuguese Antonio de Faria in 1540; a European map of 1563 depicts the river, although even by then little was known of the river upstream of the delta. European interest was sporadic: the Spaniards and Portuguese mounted some missionary and trade expeditions, while the Dutch Gerrit van Wuysthoff led an expedition up the river as far as Vientiane in 1641-42.

The French took a serious interest in the region in the mid-19th century, capturing Saigon, from Vietnamese invaders, in 1861, and establishing a protectorate over Cambodia in 1863.

The first systematic exploration began with the French Mekong Expedition led by Ernest Doudard de Lagrée and Francis Garnier, which ascended the river from its mouth to Yunnan between 1866 to 1868. Their chief finding was that the Mekong had too many falls and rapids to ever be useful for navigation. The river's source was located by Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov in 1900.

From 1893, the French extended their control of the river into Laos, establishing French Indochina by the first decade of the 20th century. This lasted until the First and Second Indochina Wars ended French and American involvement in the region.

After the Vietnam War, the tensions between the U.S.-backed Thai government and the new Communist governments in the other countries prevented cooperation on use of the river.

Bridges

The Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge (Thai: สะพาน มิตรภาพ ไทย-ลาว Saphan Mittaphap Thai-Lao) connects Nong Khai city with Vientiane in Laos. The 1170-metre-long bridge has two 3.5 m-wide lanes with an unfinished single railway line in the middle. On March 20, 2004 the Thai and Lao governments agreed to extend the railway to Tha Nalaeng in Laos

The Second Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge connects Mukdahan to Savannakhet. The two-lane, 12-metre-wide, 1600-metre-long bridge opened to the general public on January 9, 2007.

There is also a third bridge, located in Champasak province, in Laos. Unlike the Friendship bridges, this bridge is not a border crossing. It is 1380 meters long, and was completed in 2000 (Pakxe bridge ).

Cambodia has one two-lane bridge located near the city of Kompong Cham, on the road linking Phnom Penh with the remote provinces of Rattanakiri and Mondolkiri, and further away Laos.

The Upper Mekong has several bridges in China as well.

Dams

China Western Development^[8]

Mekong Dams	compl.	MW	Geo coordinate
Gongguoqiao Dam	2008	750
Xiaowan Dam	2013	4200
Manwan Dam	1996	1500
Dachaoshan Dam	2003	1350
Nuozhadu Dam	2017	5850
Jinghong Dam	2010	1750
Ganlanba Dam	n/a	150
Mengsong Dam	n/a	600

Environmental concerns

The two most controversial current issues are the building of dams and the blasting of rapids.

A number of dams have already been built on the river's tributaries, notably the Pak Mun dam in Thailand. This has been criticized on grounds of cost as well as damage to the environment and to the livelihoods of affected villagers, though none have been built on the main part itself.

China is engaged in an extensive program of dam-building on the river itself: it has already completed one at Manwan, a second is under construction at Dachaoshan, and another twelve are under consideration.

Poverty stricken and war torn Cambodia is one nation that is completely dependent on the river for food and the vast majority of its fledgling economy. The annual floods provide much needed water for crops of the otherwise dry dusty land, and to refresh Tonle Sap, yet its major cities are all vulnerable to flooding. The Mekong River Commission, a panel of the region's nations, has accused China of blatant disregard for the nations downstream in its plans to dam the river in an effort to stop the dams, but to no avail. Since the building of the first Chinese dam, many species have become endangered including the Mekong dolphin and manatee, water levels have dropped as ferries get stuck, fish caught are small and the catch is less than half of before the dam, the turnover at Chiang Rai port is less than 1/4 of previous years, and crossings from Chiang Rai to isolated Luang Prabang have lengthened from 8 hours to 2 days due to inadequate water levels.

Despite all these problems, new dams planned will have significantly worse impact if carried out as planned. All nations downstream and the environment will suffer from added pollution (due to development and relatively lax regulation and enforcement in China compared to Thailand, poisoning the food supply from pesticide runoff and heavy industry, as well as promoting algal blooms from organophosphates from agriculture, as well as water hyacinth infestation), river blockage problems as fish cannot swim upstream to spawn, and potentially devastating very low water flow.

Other environmental concerns arise from increased water flow in some parts as well as China clears rocks and sandbars, blasts gorges, and slows water as it dams and floods other sections, and relocates indigenous peoples. Cambodia by far the most exposed, depending on a fine balance of water flow, fearing scenarios of mass famine and devastating floods, the likes of which destroyed the Angkor kingdom 700 years ago. Laos' biggest cities all hug the Mekong as does Vietnam's largest city and financial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, which would be vulnerable mostly to low flow and pollution.

Tributaries

The following tributaries flow into the Mekong River. The country names following the names of the tributaries indicate the country at which the tributary joins the Mekong.

• Ing River (Thailand)
• Ruak River (Thailand)
• Mun River (Thailand)
• Chi River (Thailand)
• Dom Noi River (Thailand)
• Kok River (Thailand)
• Lam Ta Klong River (Laos/Thailand)
• Sekon River (Cambodia)
• Sesan River (Cambodia)
• Srepok River (Cambodia)
• Krong No River (Vietnam)
• Krong Ana River (Vietnam)
• Ea H'leo River (Cambodia)
• Tonlé Sap River (Cambodia)

Trivia

Balls of light are observable from time to time rising from the water's surface in the stretch of the river near Vientiane or Nong Khai. These are sometimes referred to as Naga fireballs. The locals attribute the phenomenon to Phaya Naga, Mekong Dragons.

According to researchers the river houses more species of giant fish than any world river^[1], most notably the Giant Mekong Catfish.

The low tide level of the river in Cambodia is lower than the high tide level out at sea, and the flow of the Mekong inverts with the tides throughout its stretch in Vietnam and up to Phnom Penh. The very flat Mekong Delta area in Vietnam is thus prone to flooding, especially in the provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap (Đồng Tháp), near the Cambodian border.

Footnotes

References

• Milton Osborne. 1976. River Road to China: The Mekong River Expedition 1866-1873. George Allen & Unwin.
• Milton Osborne. 2000. The Mekong, Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future Atlantic Monthly Press, New York. ISBN 0-87113-806-9
• Edward A. Gargan. 2002. The River's Tale. First published by Alfred A. Knopf.
• Fredenburg, P. and B. Hill. 2006. Sharing Rice for Peace and Prosperity in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Sid Harta Publishers, Victoria. ISBN 1-921206-08-X. pp271.

External links

• Bibliography on Water Resources and International Law See Mekong River. Peace Palace Libray
• Outline of the Mekong River
• Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, Singapore "China in the Mekong River Basin: The Regional Security Implications of Resource Development on the Lancang Jiang" by Evelyn Goh, Working Paper No. 69
• Mouth to Source Follow The Mekong, in 360 degree panoramas (QTVR), from the mouth in Viet Nam to the border with China in Northern Laos. Click the butterfly to launch the QuickTime presentation - Requires 'flash enabled' in QuickTime advanced preferences if you are using QuickTime 7 +.
• Multinational Team repeating the French Mekong Expedition of 1866
• NYTimes: The Mysterious Mekong Starts to Reveal Itself
• Musing on the Mekong
• Mekong in northern Laos
• First raft and kayak descents of the Mekong in China, 1994 - 2004

• KML
  GeoRSS

  Mekhong whiskey (sometimes Romanised as mekong or maekhong) is a local whisky found in Thailand, Cambodia, and other parts of southeast Asia. It was created in 1985 by James Hanzatko, a Chinese entrepreneur and his partner Peter Sawer.
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  cubic metre (symbol m³) is the SI derived unit of volume. It is the volume of a cube with edges one metre in length. In the United States it is spelled cubic meter. An alternate name, which allowed a different usage with SI prefixes, was the stère.
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  second (SI symbol: s), sometimes abbreviated sec., is the name of a unit of time, and is the International System of Units (SI) base unit of time.
  
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  second (SI symbol: s), sometimes abbreviated sec., is the name of a unit of time, and is the International System of Units (SI) base unit of time.
  
  SI prefixes are frequently combined with the word second to denote subdivisions of the second, e.g.
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  མཚོ་སྔོན་
  青海省
  Qīnghǎi Shěng
  Abbreviations: ?  (Pinyin: Qīng)
  
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  1 foot =
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  Mekong Delta (Vietnamese: đồng bằng sông Cửu Long “Nine Dragon river delta”) is the region in southwestern Vietnam where the Mekong River approaches and empties into the sea through a network of
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  river is a natural waterway that transits water through a landscape from higher to lower elevations. It is an integral component of the water cycle. The water within a river is generally collected from precipitation through surface runoff, groundwater recharge (as seen at baseflow
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  Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai-Tibetan (Qingzang) Plateau is a vast, elevated plateau in East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province in the People's Republic of China and Ladakh in Kashmir.
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  云南省
  Yúnnán Shěng
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