National 5A Scenic AreaNorthwest China
Yellow Emperor Mausoleum & Hukou Waterfall
黄帝陵·壶口瀑布 · Shaanxi, Yan'an
The traditional mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor and the Yellow River's thundering Hukou Waterfall.
In northern Shaanxi, the Yellow Emperor Mausoleum at Qiaoshan is the traditional sacrificial site honouring the legendary Yellow Emperor, the cultural ancestor of the Chinese people, set in a forest of ancient cypresses. Nearby, the Hukou Waterfall is the Yellow River's greatest — and China's second-largest — a thunderous golden cascade where the wide river funnels through a narrow rock gorge.
Sacrifices at the Yellow Emperor Mausoleum have been recorded for over two millennia and remain a focal point of ancestor veneration. The Hukou Waterfall forms where the Yellow River, the cradle river of Chinese civilisation, pours through a channel barely 30 metres wide, turning the water golden with loess silt.
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