River
Fen River
694 km from source to mouth · China.
ChinaFlows into Yellow River
In numbers
Length
694km
Average flow
67m³/s
Basin
39,417km²
Drop
1,260m
from 1,616 m to 356 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
694 km of river and 4 stops on the way: 3 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmGuancen Mountainsat 1,616 m
- 114 kmFenhe Shuiku21 km²
- 207 kmTaiyuan5,305,061 people
- 425 kmXinzhi72,303 people
- 487 kmLinfen959,198 people
- 694 kmYellow Riverat 356 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Shanxi, China
At the mouth it carries 67 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 38 seconds. It drops from 1,616 m to 356 m, 1.8 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 39,417 km², about the size of CH. 14.1 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from December to March. It is heavily dammed: reservoirs can hold 52% of a year's flow.
Where to start
- TaiyuanLargest city on its banks · 5,305,061 people
- Taiyuan Wusu International Airport (TYN)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 15 km from the city
- On the water7 ferry piers, marinas, boat rentals and boat ramps along the river (OpenStreetMap)
- From April to June and SeptemberThe best months to visit
Fen River, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from December to March. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): January. Best months to visit: from April to June and September.
From about 20 m³/s in the lowest month to 190 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
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The basin
Fen River: the basin in numbers
40,073 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 14.1millionpeople live in the basin
- 352/km²people per km²
- 1,119maverage altitude of the basin
- 501mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 8.6°Caverage air temperature
- 7%protected areas
- 0.1%covered by lakes
- 1.1km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 16% Forest
- 34% Cropland
- 21% Pasture
- 15% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Fen River: what you find on the way
- 18Weirs
- 6Locks
- 7Marinas
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.2 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Fen River in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
1lake on its wayLakeyas
1mountain at the sourcePeakyas
Lakes and reservoirs (1)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Fenhe Shuikukm 10421km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
Mountains at the source (1)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Guancen Mountains11 km away
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Fen River in pictures

Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Yellow RiverIn the same basin
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1154778) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Lakeyas, Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.