River dredging in China

Buzzing along on the bullet train down to Wuhan, we crossed a number of tributaries of the Yangtze River.

It's a little blurry, but that's what happens when you go blazing by at 280 kph. What is up with this river? It didn't look natural, but there wasn't a lot of time to think about it.

It looks like the river has been dredged. That is something I'm always on the lookout for. A little over a year ago I went blitzing past an alluvial gold operation by the Yellow River. But in that operation there was a lot of gravel. Nothing like that is evident in the above photo. My guess was that they were mining sand.

A little while layer, I saw this . . .

and then I was sure they were mining sand.

Near Hankou, we see this. This doesn't even look like it was a river--just a field that has had sand mined down to below the water table. Where does all this sand go?

It goes downriver. As far as Shanghai (above). But plenty of it only goes as far as Wuhan.

Barge on the Yangtze in Wuhan.

For some number of years, river dredgers from China have been causing chaos in Ghana. Now we see where they got their start.