体长椭圆形，甚侧扁。头中等大。吻尖。口大，端位，口裂倾斜，下颌稍长，上颌正中有一明显凹刻，上颌后端达眼后缘下方。脂眼脸发达。鳃耙细长且密。鳞片大且薄。无侧线，腹部有锐锯齿状大棱鳞。偶鳍基部有一长大的腋鳞。尾鳍深叉状，有小鳞。头、体背侧黑色，中上侧略带蓝绿色光泽，侧下方和腹部银白色；鳍淡黄色，背鳍基部和尾鳍边缘浅黑色

It is an anadromous fish that returns to rivers by swimming upstream to spawn. Every year from the last ten days of February to early March in Spring, the sexual matured adults of the fish swim in schools upstream from sea into rivers to spawn. This operation continues for about a month. The hatched fries immediately swim downstream. During the first year of their lives, they live in river mouths or freshwater and from the beginning of the second year of their lives, they begin to swim into sea for growth. This species are a kind of fish that feeds by filtering plankton such as Cyclopoids, Rotifer, Copepoda, ect. And large amount of members of Bacillaria and fragmentary organic matters. During the period of upstream swimming, the adult fish seldom eat. The age of sexual maturity is generally over 3 years. The spawning period is from May to July and spawning sites are generally places of rivers with undulating hills on both banks, where there are deep pools with undulating beaches and bottoms of egg-stones and places where the currents are complicated. After spawning, the parent fish swim back into sea for growing and fattening. Accrding to the data of the investi-gation of the Changjiang River, the longest life span can be over 8 years and the largest fish can be 616 mm long

渤海,黄海,东海,长江,钱塘江,南海,珠江