River Mouth at Jiangyin
2 min readThe beautiful old city Jiangyin is located atthe south side of the Yangtze River.The section of the Yangtze River near Jiangyin City narrows downsuddenly like a bottleneck, therefore this section is called “the throat of the Yangtze River”, as well as”the end of the river and beginning of the sea”and”the door to the sea”. Its geographic position is very u-nique and is considered a military fortification.
In the early Qing dynasty(1616-1911), the emperor ordered all men to shave off their hair on the forehead and wear the plaits of Manchu. People of Jiangyin City wereall Han nationality and had the tradition from ancient times that a person is born to and brought up by parents, so he must cherish his own body and doesn’t have any in-juries, which is the basic requirement of being filial. Since cutting hair was considered as an action of impiety, Jiangyin people would rather die than doing it. The impe-rial court continued to clamp down, and at last forced the Jiangyin people to raise an insurgence. The leader of insur-gence Yan Yingyuan led the people to fight a bloody battle courageously. However, how could civilians resist troops of the imperial court? After 81 days, the ammunitions and foods were exhausted in the city, and the insurgence failed at last. However, they were honored though defeated-un-til the last moment, Yan Yingyuan was still fighting and none of Jiangyin people surrendered. Their resistance with all their might not only caused large casualty of Qingtroops, but also composed an immortal episode in histo-ry”The Eighty-One Days of Jiangyin City”.
The Yangtze River enters the river mouth section by Jiangyin City. Once passing Jiangyin City, the river widens up and current slows down，and shortly is divided into two streams，south and north，by Shuangsha Mountain-a shoal in the center of the river.Behind Shuangsha Mountain is Zhangjiagang，a harbor with deep and vast water and stable coastal line through which all the boats from Suzhou，Wuxi and Changzhou go out to the sea.Depending on Shuangsha Mountain as a natural barrier，Zhangjiagang be-comes a safe haven for ships.
When the Yangtze River reaches its estuary，it ex-tends into a 200 meter-deep river mouth in the shape of aloudspeaker.The river surface is very wide there and when people pass this area by boat and step on to the upper deck to look afar，they will see that the water and sky become one and feel as if they were on the sea.It is most suitable to cite the popular sentence of Li Bai，the famous poet of the Tang dynasty（618-907），to describe the spectacular sight，“Your sail，a single shadow，becomes one with the blue sky，Till now I see only the river，on its way to heaven.”
