December 24, 2015 In China's Yunnan province, the Salween River is known as the Nujiang (怒江). It gives its name to the province's westernmost prefecture and derives from the name of the earliest inhabitants of the valley — the Nu minority. In their own language nu means 'dark'. So it's the dark people and the dark river. But the Chinese character used to represent nu is the word for 'angry'. It may be the wrong choice for designating the people, for they are a small, placid and easy-going ethnic group, much outnumbered by the Black Lisu, who make up the majority of the prefecture's population. But it seems quite appropriate to call the river 'angry', especially during the rainy months of spring and summer, when it roars through the 300 kilometer-long Nujiang canyon at seven meters per second, creating long stretches of class four and five waves.