35°13′31.01″N116°39′13.00″E / 35.2252806°N 116.6536111°E /35.2252806; 116.6536111TheSi River (Chinese:泗河, pinyin: Sì Hé; formerly泗水, pinyin: Sì Shuǐ) is ariver inShandong Province, easternChina. It also ran through the area of modernJiangsu Province until floods changed its course in 1194.

The Si rises in the southern foothills of theMengshan Mountains (蒙山), then flows throughSishui County and the cities ofQufu andYanzhou before emptying intoLake Nanyang (南阳湖).

In antiquity, the river was a major tributary of theHuai River in central China. Tributaries such as the Fan (反), Sui (睢), Tong (潼) and Yi (沂) swelled its banks as it passed through present-dayYutai,Pei,Xuzhou,Suqian, andSiyang counties in Shandong and Jiangsu. Its confluence with the Huai occurred at Sikou (泗口) or Qingkou (清口) at present-dayHuai'an in Jiangsu.^[1]

From a very early date, the Huai was connected with theYellow River through theHonggou Canal (t 鴻溝,s 鸿沟,Hónggōu, "Canal of the Wild Geese").^[2] In 486 BC,King Fuchai ofWu built theHangou Canal (t 邗溝,s 邗沟,Hángōu), connecting the Huai and Honggou to theYangtze River to their south.^[3] Amid his ongoing wars againstQi andJin, in 483 and 482 BC, he further expanded this network with theHeshui Canal (t 荷水運河,s 荷水运河,Héshuǐ Yùnhé), connecting the Si with theJi River,^[3] which ran parallel to the Yellow River through densely peopled districts in what is now western Shandong.

In 1194, at the time of the Song and Jin Dynasties, theYellow River altered its course southwards,^[4] engulfing the lower reaches of the Si River below Xuzhou City and those of the Huai River below Huai'an. As a result, the Si River no longer exists in Jiangsu Province.

During the1851–1855 Yellow River floods, the Yellow River once more altered its course northwards, assuming the course of the formerJi River and again passing north of the Shandong Peninsula in 1852. However, due to the large amount ofsilt carried by the river, it left behind a 4-to-6-metre (13 to 20 ft) high layer of mud in the lower reaches of the Si River’s former course.

The philosopherConfucius is buried on the north bank of the Si River where it passes throughQufu. The river was also traditionally regarded as a place where theNine Cauldrons were lost. Its name was preserved in the imperialSi Prefecture and Subprefecture and the present-daySi County inAnhui.

• List of rivers in China

• Needham, Joseph; et al. (1971),Science & Civilization in China,Vol. IV: Physics and Physical Technology,Pt. III: Civil Engineering and Nautics,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,ISBN 9780521070607.
• Zhao Dingxin (2015),The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History, Oxford: Oxford University Press,ISBN 978-0-19-935173-2.

• Rivers of Shandong

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