Zhangye National Geopark

Zhangye National Geopark, in Linze County and Sunan Yugur Autonomous County in Gansu province, northwestern China, protects the Zhangye Danxia landform, a 322-square-kilometer expanse of smooth, sharply ridged rock towers, some hundreds of meters tall, banded in striking reds, yellows and greens. The colored layers are sandstone and other minerals laid down over about 24 million years, later tilted by the same tectonic forces that raised the nearby Himalayas, before wind and rain eroded the tilted strata into today's towers, pillars and ravines. China designated the site a national geopark in 2016, and UNESCO recognized it as a Global Geopark in 2019; Chinese media and the magazine Chinese National Geography have both named it among the country's most beautiful landforms. The geopark sits in the northern foothills of the Qilian Mountains and now draws large numbers of visitors along an extensive network of boardwalks.