River · China, Vietnam
Red River (Vietnam)
The Red River starts in the mountains of Yunnan in China and flows south-east through northern Vietnam. It passes Hanoi, the capital, and builds a wide delta before it reaches the Gulf of Tonkin.
Picture credit: Zhangmoon618 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Red River (Vietnam)?
The river starts here: Mountains near Dali, Yunnan, China.
It ends in the Gulf of Tonkin south of Nam Định, Vietnam.
Countries on the river: China, Vietnam.
The story behind it
The Red River is named after its colour: its water is full of reddish-brown mud, which contains iron oxide, a kind of rust. In China it is called the Yuan River, and in Vietnamese it is Sông Hồng or Sông Cái, the 'Main River'. For a stretch it forms the border between China and Vietnam. Near the city of Việt Trì the Black River and the Clear River join it, and it becomes very wide. In the rainy season the river can rise quickly and cause violent floods, so people have built dikes more than 3 000 kilometres long and up to 40 metres wide at the bottom. Behind them lies the Red River Delta, where huge fields of rice grow. Old names of Hanoi contain the word for 'dragon', because the river's curve around the city was seen as a dragon. The Long Biên Bridge from 1903 still carries trains, mopeds, bicycles and walkers across the river.
Questions children ask
How long is the Red River?
Why is the Red River red?
The river carries huge amounts of mud and sand from easily crumbling soil. This mud contains iron oxide, which colours the water reddish-brown.
Why are there so many dikes along the Red River?
In the rainy season the Red River can swell suddenly and flood the land. Dikes more than 3 000 km long protect Hanoi and the rice fields of the delta.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
Last checked: