The Yangtze

From the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea

The Yangtze starts on the Tibetan Plateau as the Jinsha, drops off the edge of it, and crosses the whole width of China to reach the sea at Shanghai. That fall is the thing to feel on this plate: high ground in the west, a long descent through the Sichuan basin and the gorges, then the flat, low country in the east. The Jialing, the Wu, the Han and the Gan come in from either side as their own pieces, and the main stem is carved into the surface as a channel.

What a child works out

• A river can start on a plateau five kilometres up and still reach the sea.
• The steepest part of the journey is short; most of the river is slow and low.
• Some of the world's biggest cities sit on this one river system.

The plate

Pieces

21 pieces

12 named; the rest are sub-basins the source data leaves unnamed.

Plate

250 × 176 mm

B5 — the size of a school exercise book.

Scale

1 mm ≈ 11.2 km

How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.

Vertical exaggeration

× 6.21

Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.

Thickness

8.8 mm

Smallest piece

139 mm²

Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.

Fit

0.35 mm clearance

Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.

Material

PLA, printed in Switzerland

Every named piece

• Chang Jiang
• Chang Jiang 2
• Gan
• Gan 2
• Han
• Han 2
• Jialing
• Jialing 2
• Jinsha
• Jinsha 2
• Wu
• Wu 2