The chief route for shallow-draft craft only extends upstream from Lijin, about 50 miles (80 km) inland from the mouth of the Huang He, to Qihe, the main Huang He river port in Shandong and just northwest of Jinan.
All that is left is the show trial, which began on Thursday morning in the eastern capital of Jinan.
"China is one of the most rapidly developing countries for the yachting sector and has great potential," the companies said in a statement released at a signing ceremony in Jinan, in eastern China.
See articleCourtroom dramaThe trial of Bo Xilai, a former Chinese Politburo member, ended in the city of Jinan.
In the eastern city of Jinan, for instance, would-be parents must provide seven different documents, including statements from employers certifying their marital status.
AS REPORTERS gathered in Jinan, the capital of the coastal province of Shandong, none (except perhaps the 19 Chinese journalists who were allowed into the courtroom, presumably because of their organisations' unquestioning obedience to the Communist Party) had any idea how the authorities would choreograph China's most sensational trial in decades.
Another report said a labourer had burned himself to death in the eastern city of Jinan, and two others in the southern port of Shenzhen had climbed up cranes, threatening to jump off unless they were paid (it did not say whether they did).
Officials had said the trial in Jinan, the capital of the coastal province of Shandong, would be "open".
Several in the crowd were petitioners with grievances about injustices in their hometowns who had travelled to Jinan hoping media interest in Mr Bo's trial would help draw the attention of journalists to their own complaints.
THE trial has begun in the northern Chinese city of Jinan of a former member of the ruling Politburo, Bo Xilai.
