What Color Is the Yellow River In China?

Hwang Ho means “Yellow River” in Chinese, and we usually call the river by that name.

The river deserves its name, too. Part of the Hwang Flo flows through a region of loess, or yellow earth, and this loess is carried downstream by the river in the form of silt and sand. So much of this yellow earth is mixed with the river water that it gives the river a yellow color!

The Hwang Ho, more than 2,800 miles long, often floods its banks. When the flood waters recede, the river may follow a new course. For centuries, the Hwang Ho emptied into the Yellow Sea about 250 miles south of where it now empties.

These floods can be so damaging to the Hwang Ho basin that the river is sometimes called “China’s sorrow”.