Yellow River

China · rivers · geography · sediment

Named for its color. The Yellow River is called Huanghe in Chinese, and it earned this name because its water looks yellow. This color comes from the huge amount of sediment, or tiny bits of soil, that the river picks up as it flows through the Loess Plateau.

Incredibly long. At about 5,464 kilometers (3,395 miles) long, the Yellow River is China's second-longest river and the sixth-longest river system in the entire world. That's almost as long as the distance across the United States.

Starts high up. The Yellow River begins in the Bayan Har Mountains and then flows generally eastward across China, passing through the Ordos Plateau and the North China Plain before it finally empties into the Bohai Sea.

Huge drainage area. The Yellow River's drainage basin covers about 795,000 square kilometers. This means all the water from an area about the size of Texas eventually flows into this one river.

Dramatic twists and turns. The river doesn't just flow straight, it makes sharp turns, including a long northeast loop through Gansu called the Ordos Loop, and then it bends sharply south to form a border before turning east again.