A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a more resistant layer or layers of harder rock, e.g. shales overlain by sandstones. The resistant layer acts as a caprock that forms the flat summit of a mesa. The caprock can consist of either sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone; dissected lava flows; or a deeply eroded duricrust. Unlike plateau, whose usage does not imply horizontal layers of bedrock, e.g. Tibetan Plateau, the term mesa applies exclusively to the landforms built of flat-lying strata. Instead, flat-topped plateaus are specifically known as tablelands.
Xingan, which belongs to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, is located in the northeast of Inner Mongolia, connected with Heilongjiang Province in the northeast, Jilin Province in the southeast, Tongliao City in the south, Xilingol League and Hulunbuir City in the south, west and north, respectively. The northwest is bordered by Mongolia and the border is 126 kilometers long. The alliance is 380km long from north to south and 320km wide from east to west, with a total area of 59806 square kilometers. Xingan gets its name because it is located in the middle of the Daxing'an Mountains, and "Xing'an" means hills. By the end of 2018, Xingan had jurisdiction over two county-level cities, one county and three banners, with a resident population of 1.6079 million and a regional gross domestic product (GDP) of 47.248 billion yuan, of which the added value of the primary industry was 15.418 billion yuan and that of the secondary industry was 13.682 billion.