Mount Liupan ( zh, c=六盘山, p=Lìupán Shān) is a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

in northwestern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, located mostly in southern

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1 ...

. It marks the southwestern boundary of the

Ordos Basin The Ordos Plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin or simply the Ordos, is a highland sedimentary basin in northwest China with an elevation of , and consisting mostly of land enclosed by the Ordos Loop, a large northerly rectangular bend of the Y ...

. Its southern section is known as Mount Long ( zh, c=陇山, p=Lǒng Shān), which strides southeast through eastern

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

and western

Shaanxi province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ni ...

before joining into the

Qinling Mountains The Qinling () or Qin Mountains, formerly known as the Nanshan ("Southern Mountains"), are a major east–west mountain range in southern Shaanxi Province, China. The mountains mark the divide between the drainage basins of the Yangtze and Yellow ...

, giving rise to regional names like " Longxi" (陇西, lit. "west of Mount Long"), "Longdong" (陇东, "east of Mount Long", referring to the

Jing River The Jing River () or Jing He (Pinyin: ''Jīng Hé''), also called Jing Shui (), is a tributary of the Wei River (), which in turn is the largest tributary of the Yellow River. The Jing River flows for , with a basin area of . The river's flow v ...

valley basin region around eastern

Pingliang Pingliang () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Gansu province, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the south and east and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to the north. The city was established in 376 AD. It has a residential population of 2, ...

, southern

Qingyang Qingyang () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Gansu province, China. Geography and climate Qingyang is the easternmost prefecture-level division of Gansu and is thus sometimes referred to as "Longdong" (). It forms an administrative penins ...

and northern

Xianyang Xianyang () is a prefecture-level city in central Shaanxi province, situated on the Wei River a few kilometers upstream (west) from the provincial capital of Xi'an. Once the capital of the Qin dynasty, it is now integrated into the Xi'an metrop ...

) and "

Longnan Longnan () is a prefecture-level city in the southeast of Gansu province in China. It borders Sichuan on its south and Shaanxi on its east. As of the 2020 Chinese census, the population of the prefecture-level city was 2,855,555. Geography and ...

" (陇南, "south of Mount Long"). It is the western boundary of the

Guanzhong Plain Guanzhong (, formerly romanised as Kwanchung) region, also known as the Guanzhong Basin, Wei River Basin, or uncommonly as the Shaanzhong region, is a historical region of China corresponding to the crescentic graben basin within present-day ...

, and is also the source of the Qian River (千河), a left tributary of the

Wei River The Wei River () is a major river in west-central China's Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. It is the largest tributary of the Yellow River and very important in the early development of Chinese civilization. The source of the Wei River is close to ...

that flows through the

prefectural city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. During the Republican era, many of China' ...

Baoji () is a prefecture-level city in western Shaanxi province, People's Republic of China. Since the early 1990s, Baoji has been the second largest city in Shaanxi. Geography The prefecture-level city of Baoji had a population of 3,321,853 accordin ...

Poem of the same name

A poem of same name was dedicated to this mountain by

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

in 1935, when the

Chinese Red Army The Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army or Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, commonly known as the Chinese Red Army or simply the Red Army, are the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party. It was formed when Communist ...

arrived into the friendly

Shaanbei Shaanbei () or Northern Shaanxi is the portion of China's Shaanxi province north of the Huanglong Mountain and the Meridian Ridge (the so-called "Guanzhong north mountains"), and is both a geographic as well as a cultural area. It makes up the so ...

region at the end of the

Long March The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Red Army, Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Revolut ...

Geography

It is one of the youngest mountain ranges of China. It is relatively narrow with a width between 5 and 12 km, and a length of around 240 km. The highest peak, Migangshan (米缸山), is at above sea level. Owing to its orientation perpendicular to humid winds, it is considered a 'green island' within the

Loess Plateau The Chinese Loess Plateau, or simply the Loess Plateau, is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surroun ...

. Most of the mountain's area is covered by forests.

References

{{coord missing, Gansu Mountain ranges of Gansu AAAA-rated tourist attractions

Poem of the same name

Geography

See also

References