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Home >> Red River Delta :> Red River Delta The largest river of northern Vietnam, Red River, rises in China's Yunnan province. It's around 1,200 kilometers long. It flows generally southeastwardly through deep, narrow gorges to enter Vietnam and discharge into the Gulf of Tonkin. The river and its distributaries spread out to form the Red River Delta. The reddish-brown heavily silt-laden water gives the river its name. Its two main disbutaries, the Lo River and the Da River, contribute to its high water volume, which averages 500 million cubic meters per second, but may increase by more than 60 times at the peak of the rainy season. The Red River Delta, also called Dong Bang Song Hong in Vietnamese, is a flat, triangular region of 15,000 square kilometers. The delta is about 240 kilometers wide and 120 kilometers long. It is smaller but more intensely developed and more densely populated than the Mekong River Delta. Once an inlet of the Gulf of Tonkin, it has been filled in by the enormous alluvial deposits of the rivers over a period of millennia, and it advances one hundred meters into the Gulf annually. The ancestral home of the ethnic Vietnamese, the delta is the economic centre of northern Vietnam, accounted for almost 70% of the agriculture and 80% of the industry of North Vietnam before 1975. The entire delta region, backed by the steep rises of the forested highlands, is no more than three meters above sea level, and much of it is one meter or less. The area is subject to frequent flooding; at some places the high-water mark of floods is fourteen meters above the surrounding countryside. For centuries, flood control has been an integral part of the delta's culture and economy. An extensive system of dikes and canals has been built to contain the Red River and to irrigate the rich rice-growing delta.The Red River Delta shares the same weather to the northern part of Vietnam. During January, the coldest month of the year, Hanoi has a mean temperature of 17°C while the annual average temperature is 23°C. The winter season lasts from November to April, from early February to the end of March, there is a persistent drizzling rain, and March to April sometimes are considered to be a transitional period. The summer lasts from April or May to October with heat, heavy rain, and occasional typhoons. Today, around fifteen million people inhabit the area, one of the highest population densities in the world. Rice is still the principal crop of the delta, but wheat, beans, rapeseed, corn, and subtropical crops are also grown. Historically, the delta has produced a large number of skilled craftspeople. The annual rice-growing cycle featured a period where farmers left the land fallow, thus freeing them to pursue other money-making ventures. Villages specialized in a wide variety of crafts that ranged from the making of conical hats to the production of lacquerware. The tradition continues to the present day in the form of Vietnam’s famous ‘craft villages’, mostly clustered in the rural areas surrounding Hanoi and now major tourist attraction.
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