Introduction
The mighty Yangtze River, or Chang Jiang, dominates China's central region, flowing for more than 6,300km from the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea, near Shanghai.
Along the way it passes through the breadbasket states of Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi and the Three Gorges, symbolically dividing the Mandarin-speaking north from the Cantonese south.
Many of the cities along the Yangtze Basin remain studded with European buildings as a result of them being declared treaty ports in the 1860s, following the Second Opium War.
The best way to discover the region is with a Yangtze River cruise aboard the MS Yangzi Explorer.
