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The Yellow River, also known as the Huang He River, is the second longest river in China and sixth longest river in the world.
The Yellow River is the 6th longest river in the world and the 2nd longest river in China. Only the Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi and Yenisei rivers are longer with the Yangtze also being in China. The total length of the Yellow River is 3,398 miles.
It is called the Yellow River because of the yellow silt known as Loess that continuously flows in the river and colors it.
The upper parts of the Yellow River are known for clear water. It is in the middle sections of the river when it passes through the Loess Plateau that the river picks up the yellow silt it is named for. At points along the lower river the silt deposits become so thick the bed of the river actually lies Above ground level as high as 33 feet.
The source of the Yellow River is the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China and it ends in the Bohai Sea. The river passes through 9 provinces Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong. Major cities along the Yellow River include Lanzhou, Wuhai, Baotou, Kaifeng, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, and Jinan.
Chinese civilization began in the Yellow River basin and the river is known as "the Cradle of the Chinese civilization".
While historically the flooding of the Yellow River has helped Chinese crops and Chinese civilization to flourish, the flooding has at times been devastating to the Chinese people. In 1887 the river flooded and killed as many as 2 million people on the North China Plain. The river flooded again in the same area and killed another 1 million to 4 million people in 1931. In 1938 when China was at war with Japan, Chiang Kai-Shek ordered the levees of the river broken to stop the onrushing Japanese soldiers and the resulting flooding killed nearly a million Chinese people and an untold number of Japanese troops.
The Yellow River is a great power source for China with at least 12 hydroelectric power stations along its path. Due mainly to modern irrigation uses the upper parts of the Yellow River have dried up at times.
The Yellow River today is seriously polluted along many stretches and that is not unique in China where the Government estimates 70% of all the country's rivers and lakes to be seriously polluted.
The Yellow River is a symbol of China's past and present.
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