Amur River
— — the river that freezes solid every winter.
Not only on a wall.
“The Amur runs roughly 2,824 kilometres from the meeting of the Shilka and Argun east to the Strait of Tartary. For most of its length it marks the border between Russia's Far East and China's Heilongjiang. The river freezes deep enough each winter to drive trucks across at Khabarovsk, then breaks up in late April with a sound that carries for kilometres.
Amur River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Amur, called Heilong Jiang or Black Dragon River in Chinese, is the tenth-longest river in the world at roughly 2,824 kilometres, or 4,444 if counted from the headwaters of the Argun. It rises at the confluence of the Shilka and Argun, runs east through the Russian Far East, defines about 1,615 kilometres of the Russia and China border, then turns north and empties into the Strait of Tartary opposite Sakhalin Island. Khabarovsk, on the Russian bank, is the largest city on the river.
Most of the Amur basin is thinly populated. The Russian side moves from larch taiga south of the Stanovoy Range to broadleaf forest near Khabarovsk; the Chinese side opens into the farmland of Heilongjiang. Between settlements the river runs for hours with nothing on the bank but birch, alder, and the occasional fishing camp. Amur tigers and Amur leopards, the world's rarest big cats at fewer than six hundred and a hundred animals respectively, hold the southern forests of the basin.
The river freezes by late November and stays under ice for roughly five months. Ice roads cross it at Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk through the deep winter; the break-up in late April releases blocks the size of cars downstream. Summer brings the salmon run (chum and pink salmon spawn into the tributaries from August onward) and the Amur taimen, a salmonid that can exceed two metres, still holds in the upper reaches. The river carries more sediment in late summer than in any other season.