There is a river on this planet that is only a few centimeters wide, making it easy to step over. At first glance, this tiny water body might seem at high risk of disappearing, but that’s unlikely: the river is thousands of years old and has always been the narrowest river on the planet.
The widest river is located in South America: the Rio de la Plata, an estuary formed by the confluence of two rivers. At its widest point, Rio de la Plata reaches 48 km across, and as it flows into the Atlantic, it becomes a sea, widening several times. There’s also the Amazon River, which is about 11 km wide during the dry season and expands three to four times during the rainy season.
There are many other rivers on Earth with banks several kilometers apart. This makes it even harder to imagine a narrow waterway in China that is only a few centimeters wide being called a river at all. It is so narrow that it can be stepped over literally anywhere.
The average width of the Huolai River is 15 centimeters, but in some places, it narrows to just 4 centimeters. However, Huolai holds the status of a river because width is not the primary characteristic of this type of water body. Moreover, Huolai has all the other features of a river: it is a permanent water body that flows continuously throughout the year, it has a defined basin, characteristic banks that it floods, and its length is 17 kilometers.
The depth of the Huolai River is also impressive for such a small stream: 50 centimeters. Surprisingly, fish even swim in it; locals report that sometimes the fish have to squeeze between the banks.
The Huolai River originates from an underground spring, flows through the meadows of Inner Mongolia, and empties into Dalai Lake. According to Chinese experts, the river is about 10,000 years old. However, this age is not particularly old for a river, as the ages of river bodies are usually measured in millions of years: for example, the Amazon River is 9 million years old.
Interestingly, Huolai also has a more poetic name—Book Bridge River. This name arose from an interesting folk legend. It is said that a boy once tried to step over the Huolai and accidentally dropped a book. He was crossing at the narrowest point, and the book landed in such a way that it connected the two banks. Ants took advantage of this, and the book became a bridge for them to cross to the other side of the Huolai.