Norwich bulletin., 1916-05-31
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Tsinanfu, one of the chief centers of disturbance during the revolutionary outbreaks now occurring in China, is the subject of the following bulletin of the National Geographic Society, issued from it's Washington headquar- ters:,
 'The disorders which are making a political maelstrom of Tsinanfu (also spelled Chinanfu), the capital of, the province of Shan-tung, China, gives space in the news of the day to a city of 100, 900 inhabitants which has been poised on the brink of calamity for a decade. It is in this vicinity that the relentless Hoangho (Yellow River) each season threatens destructive de- pouches which may eventually parallel the catastrophe caprice of 1887 when it broke through it's banks at Kiafeng- full, flooding an area as large as the state of New York and entailing the loss of more than a million lives.
 '"Tsinanfu, with it's triple walls, lies four miles to the south of the Hoang- ho, whose river-bed year by year is elevated above the contiguous plains while the natives continue to build up the imprisoning levees, thus defer ring as long as possible the fateful day when the pressure of the flood stream breaks through the banks and the tawny water claim their thousands of victims as they make new chan mel to the sea-
 sThe Hoangho is one of the great watercourses of Asia, but it very ap- propriately bears the name of C*hina's sorrow, for although it is almost as long as our own Mississippi and drains a basin of nearly 400, ,000 square miles, it is practically useless as a commerce carrier, it's waters being to shallow in winter and it's current to torrentiaI in summer. It brings down from the empires central plains vast deposits of yellow silt, Onence it's name) which cause the bed of the stream gradually l to rise. The natives endeavor to check the waters as they begin to spread out from the elevated channel and slowly the river is raised high above the surrounding plains. When the break occurs the waters often find a new channel and begin again their | claanges in the course of this erratiC
 river during the last 2,5O0 years is in l ffcated by the fact that some of its
 mouths are 50 miles apart.
 Ut has been computed that within the next 36,000 years the Hoagho ana thes other important rivers of nortl China, the Yangtsze and the Peiho will bring down enough silt to fill thu l Yellow Sea and the Gulf of CIlih-H thus connecting Manchuria and Kores | with Shantung. and giving rise to DO Iitical complications which need hard lly disturb even the most far-sightet
 statesmen of the present generation
 "Tsinanfu was at one time an inn pcrtanr silk market and limitation jewelry of glass was also made ant sold extensively, the glass comina from Po-shan-hein, chief city of tn
 fbIack country of Shan-tung, where i has been manufactured since the sixtI century, B. c.
 saThe capital enjoys the advantag of being connected by railroad wit Kiao-chow, 2S0 miles to the east, an
 with Tientsin about two hundred mile } to the north Peking is 245 miles t the northwest.
 One of the widely appreciated ma i tural phenomena of this section is tn
 spring of warm water, near the yves
 gate of the city. It is supposed t
 have great Eaealing powers"