River · China
Songhua River
The Songhua, also called the Sungari, is a big river in north-east China. It starts in the Changbai Mountains, flows past the city of Harbin and joins the Amur, the border river between China and Russia.
Picture credit: Baycrest (CC BY-SA 2.5) · 颜邯 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Songhua River?
The river starts here: Changbai Mountains near the border with North Korea.
It ends in the Amur River at Tongjiang, Heilongjiang.
Countries on the river: China.
The story behind it
The Songhua begins in the Changbai Mountains, close to the border with North Korea. It first flows north-west, then turns north-east across a wide, flat plain. Because the land is so flat, the river has wandered over time and left behind many curved lakes, called oxbow lakes, where its old bed used to be. Upstream, the Fengman Dam holds back a long lake and makes electricity. Further on lies Harbin, a big city famous for its winter festival. Workers cut huge blocks of ice, 60 to 90 centimetres thick, straight from the frozen Songhua and build whole glowing buildings out of them. The festival runs from late December to late February. The river stays frozen from late November until March. In the warmer months medium-sized ships can sail up to Harbin. Near Tongjiang the Songhua finally flows into the Amur.
Questions children ask
How long is the Songhua River?
The Songhua is about 1 927 km long. Depending on how it is measured, sources give between about 1 897 and 1 927 km.
Where does the Songhua flow into?
Where does the ice for Harbin's festival come from?
It is cut straight from the frozen Songhua River in blocks 60 to 90 centimetres thick. From these blocks people build glowing ice buildings that can be visited from late December to late February.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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