In the present paper, high resolution inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (HR-ICP-MS) was applied to analyse the contents of rare earth elements (REE) in the filtering water and suspensions from 12 sampling sites in Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia Sections of Yellow River, and the fractionation of REE in suspensions was also studied. The results demonstrated that the contents of REE in filtering water were very low, and the element with highest content of elements was La(32.0 ng·L-1). The average concentration of total REE (∑REE) in filtering water was 47.5 ng·L-1, and the Baotou-Dengkou (S1) and Sanhuhekou (S2) sampling sites had a higher ∑REE of 130.0 and 100.0 ng·L-1, which implied that there might be external REE sources in the filtering water. And in suspensions, the average content of ∑REE was 167.8 mg·kg-1, which was similar to the Chinese soil background value. While the heavy rare earth elements (HREE) content in Shenchuanqiao (S11) of Gansu province were significantly higher than other stations, which indicated that it might have external HREE sources. The chondrite-normalized patterns of REE in suspensions from the study area were similar to that of Chinese soil, with light rare earth elements enrichment, and moderate Eu depletion and a bit of Ce depletion. It was showed that the contents of REE in suspensions were mainly from soil weathering.