Yellow in China

Last Tuesday ,Ms Yap asked us two serious questions: why is Yellow Mountain called Yellow Mountain in China? And why is Yellow River called Yellow River? Generally speaking, I have never thought about those questions. We call it ‘Yellow River’ because, of course, the river is really yellow. I have once been to Shandong Province .On the way home the train ran on a bridge cross the Yellow River. It was my first time to see the real Yellow River. It was yellow indeed and to my great surprise, it was very fleet. I can even see a dog swimming in it! We all know that the Yellow River is the ‘mother river’ of China. As I surf the internet, I know that our mother river had, as one time, been really clear and beautiful. Her name is not ‘Yellow River’ at that time. Our forefathers just called her ‘River’ or ‘the Great River’. But in Han Dynasty, as the sand and mud in the river became to accumulate, the river was not clear any more. Then people called it ‘Dirty River’ or ‘Yellow River’ till now

But another question is, where does the name of ‘Yellow Mountain’ come from? Are the mountains yellow there? Of course they are not! In fact, the mountains were called ‘Yi Shan’, which was wrote as ‘黟山’ in ancient China. In Tang Dynasty, Emperor Xuan Zong changed its name to ‘Huang Shan’ because it was said that Huang Di had once been there to refine medicine.

There are many places of interest in China whose names include the word ‘yellow’. We can see that the yellow really means a lot to China. In ancient China, people believed that there were five kinds of materials that made up our world. They are: gold, wood, water, fire, and ground. And each of the five materials has a color. For example, white meant gold and green meant wood. The famous Qing Dynasty in Chinese history chose its color as black, which meant water. So in Qing Dynasty, black was a sacred color which can only be used on emperor. Then, Qing Dynasty was destroyed by Han Dynasty. So first emperor of Han Dynasty chose yellow, which meant ground, as its own color because ground can artist water. Maybe Han Dynasty was the most successful dynasty in Chinese history, so yellow became the color of emperor from then on. Little by little, yellow has become the major color of China, as well as red. So the color of Chinese flag is yellow and red.