[1] Sheepskin rafts are popular along the Yellow River in provinces like Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai.
During that period of time, the sheepskin raft was used as a means of water transportation that made crossing the Yellow River more convenient.
During that period, it was mostly used to transport goods like leather, hookah, and wool from the northwest region of China to its east coast.
From 1950 to 1954, sheepskin rafts began to be used again in long-distance transportation because of environmental management of the Yellow River.
Instead of transporting goods, sheepskin rafts were more frequently used to carry passengers during this period of time.
[3] Nowadays, sheepskin rafts are no longer used as a water transportation, but as a tourist attraction and cultural symbol.
[4] Sheepskin rafts are considered an important contributor to the Sino-Japanese war and a symbol of Chinese patriotism.
The transportation function of sheepskin raft carrying people and goods has gradually changed into a tourism activity.
Sheepskin raft, as an original heritage object of Chinese ancient civilization, has become a cultural symbol of Gansu province and the Yellow River.
[1][6] Some ways to preserve and develop the sheepskin raft are to strengthen support funding and qualifications recognition for those who are still working in the trade, to establish agencies and institutions specialized in the sheepskin raft, to strengthen protection on the cultural front, to standardize the management of securing the immaterial inheritance, to build the sports tourism brand on the Yellow River, and to depend on sheepskin raft sporting events to fasten the development of industrialization.
In a journal published in 1902, the geographer Ellsworth Huntington described how the local Armenians made the "kellek" (the Turkish term for a sheepskin raft).