page_title: Loess Plateau
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Loess Plateau / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The eroding edge of the loess plateau just north of Linxia City (near the Wanshou Guan pagoda)
context_page_description: The Loess Plateau, is a 640,000 km² plateau in north/northwest China with an elevation of 1,250–2,000 m, located around the southern half of the Yellow River's Ordos Loop and the valleys of its two largest tributaries, the Wei and Fen Rivers. The Loess Plateau covers almost all of the provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi and extends into parts of Henan, Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. It was enormously important to Chinese history, as it formed one of the early cradles of Chinese civilization and its eroded silt is responsible for the great fertility of the North China Plain, along with the repeated and massively destructive floods of the Yellow River. Its soil has been called the "most highly erodible... on earth" and conservation efforts and land management are a major focus of modern Chinese agriculture.
context_section_description: Historically the Loess Plateau has provided simple, insulated shelter from the cold winter and hot summer in the region, as homes called yaodong (窰洞) were often carved into the loess soil. In medieval times people stayed here to grow rice; some families still live in this kind of shelter in modern times.
  In ancient times, this region was an important center of the Silk Road. Goods moving by caravan to the west included gold, rubies, jade, textiles, coral, ivory, and art works. In the opposite direction moved bronze weapons, furs, ceramics, and cinnamon bark.
  During the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, 830,000 people were killed as a result of collapsing loess caves.
  The yaodongs that are best known to the world are perhaps those in Yan'an where the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong headquartered in 1930s. When Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star Over China, visited Mao and his party, he lived in a yaodong.
caption: Erosion gradually deprives a corn farmer of his land in Linxia City, Gansu
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