What is China’s Sorrow?
Hwang Ho, or the Yellow River, is popularly known as China’s Sorrow because of its devastating floods. This remarkable stream is one of the largest rivers in the world and is the second largest in China, being second only to the Yangtze. It has its sources in Tibet and meanders 2,700 miles through northern China. Yellow River is merely a- literal translation of Chinese twang (“yellow”), and ho (“river”). The stream was so named from the fact that the water has a yellowish color owing to the presence of muddy earth in solution. Enormous quantities of infinitesimal particles of silt, known to geologists as loess, are blown by the wind into the upper reaches of the stream from the Gobi Desert country. In flood times this material may constitute as high as eighteen per cent of the volume of water. The Yellow Sea into which the Yellow River flows also has the same yellowish hue. The Chinese call the sea Hwang Hai, literally “Yellow Sea,” hai being Chinese for “sea.” China’s Sorrow, also cal
