Look out for generalizations- mostly kept under control but occasionally escaping and behaving irresponsibly. Loess is a Chinese phenomenon- found all over the world but at its biggest and thickest and most impressive in China. Loess is a critical part of the Chinese landscape and the first writing about Loess must have been in Chinese. As Chinese is promoted as a World language perhaps more of these early writings will become accessible and available. A digression already- this is the age of the Chinese language; all made possible by the coalscence of the language and advanced computer technology- read 'Kingdom of Characters' by Jing Tsu, published by Penguin in 2019.
"Computers are finally able to process Chinese! Long live square characters." Chen Mingyuan 1980
The marriage of computer + Chinese language may lead to all sorts of remarkable and marvellous effects and will surely result in increased publication in Chinese, about Loess. But this is for the future. This discussion is essentially historical. Scientific writing about Loess was initially a European affair.
Rogers CDF Dijksra TA Smalley IJ 1994 Hydroconsolidation and subsidence of loess: studies from China, Russia, North America and Europe- in memory of Jan Sajgalik. Engineering Geology 37, 83-113
Why this EG reference; what is the relevance of hydroconsolidation? It has been claimed that this is the first paper to give some consideration to the five loess languages: Chinese, English, German, French, Russian- the five languages in which most papers on loess are/were published. Loess soil structure collapse is a problem on all continents- a practical problem considered in all local languages- and all international languages. Andre Dodonov once remarked that 90% of loess research in the Soviet Union was devoted to the study of collapse and subsidence- which is not really a surprise when one considers the coincidence of population and collapsing loess ground in the east of the country. Much loess research was published in Russian- collapse studies reviewed in Rogers et al (1994). There were always transmission and translation problems- right to the end of Soviet times the term 'collapsibility' caused problems and much Russian work was not appreciated because of this single problem.
Kriger probably remains the key person in Russian loess bibliography. Nicolai Ivanovich Kriger- a much published but little appreciated star of the literature in Russian. Actually having stated that it must be noted that Marton Pecsi, during his years as President of the INQUA Loess Commission, did work closely with Kriger, and their joint efforts served to promote interest in Loess in Russian.
N.I.Kriger (photo taken at the time of the IGC in Moscow in 1982 (by IS). It appears to be the only photograph of Kriger extant, various searches have not revealed another; also it would be useful to know his dates and something of his history. From the bibliographical point of view the most useful Kriger work is Kriger 1965 the book he produced for INQUA at Boulder USA in 1965.
Kriger, N.I. 1965. Loess- its characteristics and relation to the geographical environment. pub. Izd-vo Moscow 296p. (in Russian). Only 1350 copies of this invaluable work were printed and they are extremely scarce. It is a particularly useful book because of its bibliographical content. There must be other relatively large scale studies of Russian loess (loess in Russian) but none appears to rival the Kriger volume. Sections of Kriger 1965 were reprinted in Loess Letter Supplements but these were not widely circulated and are probably as rare as the original.
German
The Rhine Valley; for a long time for the OED the home of loess. The first European writings on loess were in German
