Yellow Shift

Since last spring heavy rains have swollen the two rivers that writhe clear across China: deep Yangtze and wide, slow Hwang Ho or Yellow River which 81 years ago shifted its entire course from the south to the north side of the Shantung Peninsula. Government experts last month warned China's millions that "almost inevitably" the Hwang Ho would writhe out of its new retaining dikes (many feet above the surrounding terrain) back to its old course (TIME, July 3). Last week the Hwang Ho broke its dikes in a dozen places in Shantung and Honan Provinces, flipped out tentative feelers of yellow water. Like a wandering serpent, one mile-wide flood flailed ponderously across Honan Province. Where the old and new beds of the Hwang Ho fork, roily water slupped around the cities of Chengchow, Lanfeng and Kaifeng, drowning 1,000 working peasants at one gulp near the latter.

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