The Yangtze, Main Street of China, affects the lives of more people than does any other river. For in the Yangtze basin live two hundred million human beings, one-tenth of the human race. Half the goods that travel through the country are moved on Yangtze waters. 

The river springs up in wild, snow-clad mountains in Tibet, an area few people have ever seen. Here it is a mad torrent, untamed and untamable, impossible to navigate, impossible even to imagine.

Halfway down its length, the great river, squeezed between cliffs thousand of feet high, twists and struggles, making rapids and deep dangerous whirlpools. Here the gorges are world-famous not only for their picture-book beauty, but also for their wrecks. Chinese junks, loaded with goods, make their way perilously through the gorges, towed by trackers who scramble over the rocks with the towrope, their lives constantly in danger.

Then the Yangtze spreads itself between rich green plains where its waters reach out in a network of irrigation ditches to nourish the crops. Parts of the lower Yangtze are crowded with houseboats lying at anchor, laundry flapping in the breeze and children playing on the decks. For the river is home to thousands who spend all their lives on houseboats.

The Yangtze is finally crowned at its outlet to the sea by a vast skyscraper city—Shanghai—the great port of China and one of the six largest cities on earth. Here is the absorbing story of China's lifeline, its Main Street, the river highway that serves more people than any other river in the world.

From the dust jacket