The Yellow River carries the loess of the Loess Plateau downstream to form the North China Plain, and the tributaries of the Yellow River, Weihe River and Fenhe River, create the Guanzhong Plain and Fenhe River Valley Plain. These plains are the birthplace of Chinese civilization, because the Yellow River has the Central Plains.
These plains are one of the most arable lands in the world, and still support one third of the population in China. This is the meaning of mother river.
In the early days of ancient history, when the world navigation technology was not developed, the southeast coast of China was a wild land. The most important passage between China and the world is the Hexi Corridor (until Xuanzang went to India to learn from the scriptures in the Tang Dynasty, he still took this route, not the southwest region where the road was closer. The route to the western regions and Europe, not to mention the Hexi Corridor).
The territory of Chinese civilization connected with the Hexi Corridor is the Yellow River Basin, so people in the Yellow River Basin have the most convenient communication with the world and the highest degree of civilization development (the smelting technology of bronze and iron was probably introduced to China from the western regions), which basically makes the rise of Chinese civilization in the Central Plains inevitable.
Located in the north of China, the Yellow River is one of the longest rivers in the world and the second longest river in China. The "yellow" of the Yellow River is actually sediment. The ancient book says: "The Yellow River fights water, and mud ranks seventh."
90% of the sediment of the Yellow River comes from the Loess Plateau, where the soil is loose and easy to erode and disperse. Whenever it is washed by heavy rain, it will lose a lot of soil and water and flow into the Yellow River.
The river basin is long in winter and short in summer, with large temperature difference between winter and summer and obvious seasonal temperature change. There is little precipitation in the basin, mainly dry land agriculture, which is dry in winter and spring, and the precipitation in summer and autumn is concentrated in July and August.
The Yellow River originates from the Yogu Zonglie Basin at the northern foot of Bayan Kara on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, flows through nine provinces (autonomous regions) of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan and Shandong from west to east, and finally flows into the Bohai Sea. The total length of the Yellow River is about 5,464 kilometers, and the drainage area is about 752,443 square kilometers.
The website of the Ministry of Water Resources "Yellow River Network" records that the total basin area is 795,000 square kilometers (including the inflow area of 42,000 square kilometers).