A gorge at the reserve's east edge
Helan County lies north of Yinchuan's urban core and shares a boundary with Pingluo County in Shizuishan. At Helankou, the pass on the east side of the Helan Mountain national nature reserve, the gorge walls carry pecked pictures. Along about 250 kilometres of the Helan Mountains the scatter runs to more than 40,000 images. The densest group is here: more than 6,000 of the most concentrated images sit at Helankou, inside Yinchuan. The scenic ground is this same pass, 56 kilometres from the city, in Helan County, at the east foot of the reserve, at the mouth of the gorge. From that boundary the gorge opens eastward onto the county. The pecked panels sit in the mouth of the mountain. Other carvings continue along the range, including stretches toward Shizuishan and beyond. The place people come to see is this gorge, where the reserve meets the county.
Faces, herds and the work of hands
The stone holds human faces, animals, plants, human bodies, celestial signs, tools, and scenes of herding, hunting, sacrifice, combat and dance. A face on these walls is a few deliberate blows, eyes and a mouth left where the weather still reaches the panel. A herding scene sets animals and a human figure in the same field of rock. Hunting, sacrifice, combat and dance stand beside them on that same panel—work, rite and bodies in one stretch of cliff. Tools and celestial signs sit among them. In 1996 the State Council listed the site as a national priority protected cultural site. The pictures stay on the gorge walls at the pass: faces, creatures, implements, and those scenes of livelihood and ceremony. The mountain in the pictures is a herding ground. The mountain underfoot is the edge of a national nature reserve.
Two museums at the carved wall
In 2008 the Yinchuan World Rock Art Museum opened at the site. In 2015 the Han Meilin Art Museum opened there as well. Han Meilin is a contemporary artist, and the museum is his reading of the same rocks, so the pass continues past the anonymous carvers into a living practice. A visitor can stand at a pecked face on the gorge wall and then walk to the 2008 building. In 2006 the Ministry of Construction placed the site on the first national preparatory list of mixed natural and cultural heritage. That list belongs to the Chinese ministry. It is not a UNESCO list. The World Heritage property on these Helan foothills is the Xixia Imperial Tombs, necropolis of the Western Xia, a Tangut state of the 11th to 13th centuries, inscribed by UNESCO in 2025. Helankou remains the 1996 national protected site in Helan County, the pass, and the two museums set beside the panels.