In Jingtai County, the Yellow River enters from the southeast and turns north at Longwan, cutting a deep canyon. Local reporting describes the bend as an omega-shaped curve, with villages and cultivated plots on the inner bank and steep landforms along the water. The view connects river geography to daily settlement: fields occupy gentler ground while the canyon walls rise nearby. The stone forest is part of a transition between the Loess Plateau and the Tengger Desert.
From the journal
Stone pillars at the Yellow River bend
At Longwan in Jingtai County, the Yellow River curves through a canyon of sandy-conglomerate pillars. The river, farms and cliffs occupy the same broad view.
In the same city · Baiyin ↗The river’s turn at Longwan
Pillars of sandy conglomerate
The formations consist mainly of yellow-brown sandy conglomerate shaped by geological movement, weathering and water erosion. Local materials give a broad geological timescale and describe pillars ranging from around eighty metres to more than two hundred metres in height. Their rough surfaces and upright profiles differ from the thin color bands of Zhangye’s sedimentary hills. Here the Yellow River has cut a canyon through coarse deposits; the water and the rock formations are inseparable parts of the landscape.
A county landscape within Baiyin
The stone forest lies in Jingtai County, within Baiyin’s wider municipal area. Baiyin’s urban history is closely tied to copper mining and industrial development, while Jingtai’s river bend is a county landscape of canyon, villages and fields. The distinction helps place the site on the map without making the industrial city stand in for the entire municipality. Farther upstream, Zhongshan Bridge in Lanzhou is a built crossing over the same river. At Longwan, the river itself has shaped the passage through stone.