Huang He, << hwahng hu, >> also spelled Huang Ho, is the second longest river in China. Only the Yangtze is longer. The Huang He is sometimes called China’s Sorrow because of the many floods that have brought hunger and death to the people living along its banks. The river is called Huang He (Yellow River) because it carries large amounts of soft yellow earth.
The Huang He runs a course of 3,395 miles (5,464 kilometers) and drains an area of about 400,000 square miles (1,036,000 square kilometers). It flows east from Qinghai Province to the Yellow Sea. The earth carried by the river is deposited in such large amounts at the river’s bottom that it raises the bed and causes the river to change its course often. The Huang He cannot be used by ships because the upper part is too swift, while the middle and lower parts are too shallow.
The worst Huang He flood occurred in 1887, when the river overflowed an area of about 50,000 square miles (130,000 square kilometers). Nearly a million people died in this flood. From 500,000 to 6 million others died from starvation and disease following the flood. Dikes have been kept up for hundreds of years to lessen the danger, but the river has never been completely controlled.
