Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Yellow River is estimated to be 5,464 kilometers long, making it the second-longest river in China and the sixth-longest river system on Earth. It originates in the Bayan Har Mountains and flows generally eastward before emptying into the Bohai Sea.
The Yellow River earned the nickname "China's Sorrow" because of its catastrophic history of flooding. In the 2,540 years between 595 BC and 1946 AD, it flooded 1,593 times. The 1887 flood killed between 900,000 and 2 million people, and the 1931 flood is the deadliest recorded flood in history, killing an estimated 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 people.
On the 9th of June 1938, Kuomintang troops under Chiang Kai-shek deliberately broke the levees at Huayuankou in Henan to halt the advancing Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The flood inundated 54,000 square kilometers and killed between 500,000 and 900,000 Chinese civilians. The Kuomintang publicly blamed Japanese warplanes for bombing the dikes and did not acknowledge responsibility.
Silt carried from the Loess Plateau deposits continuously along the slower lower reaches of the river, gradually raising the riverbed above the surrounding plain. At Kaifeng in Henan, the riverbed sits 10 meters above ground level, creating what is called the "Earth Suspended River" or "river above ground".
In 1128, Song troops under Kaifeng governor Du Chong breached the southern dikes to stop the Jin army, sending the river south of the Shandong Peninsula into the Huai River system, where it emptied into the Yellow Sea. The river remained in this southern course until 1855, a period of 727 years.
Yes. Since 1999, unified water-flow regulation across the entire river has maintained continuous flow to the sea. In 1997, the river had failed to reach the sea for 226 consecutive days. By the 12th of August 2024, the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee reported 25 consecutive years of uninterrupted flow.