The Yangtze passes through some of China's most beautiful landscapes. The most famous part is the Three Gorges - three huge stretches where the river cuts between cliffs that rise up like walls on either side. Boats glide along, dwarfed by the mountains.
The river is home to thousands of plants and animals. The Yangtze finless porpoise is a small, smiley-looking river dolphin that lives only here. There are only a few thousand left, so it is one of China's most protected animals.
Farmers grow rice, wheat and tea along the river's huge basin (the land that drains into it). Rice fields look like mirrors when they are flooded, reflecting the sky. From the air, the Yangtze valley looks like a giant patchwork quilt.
Because the river is so important, people built one of the largest dams in the world across it - the Three Gorges Dam. It is so big that it creates electricity for tens of millions of homes by using the power of the flowing water.