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.
Huishui County belongs to Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province. It is located in the central and southern part of Guizhou Province, bordering Guiyang, west and Anshun to the north. The county is 72 kilometers wide from east to west and 68 kilometers from north to south. Ethnic minorities account for 58%. Huishui has been established in Nanning since the five dynasties, Bafan in the Song Dynasty, Chengfan House and Dingfan House in the Ming Dynasty, which has a history of more than a thousand years. The Buyi, Miao, Han, Maonan, Zhuang, Yi, Shui, Hui and other ethnic groups who have lived in this land have built Huishui into a famous land of rice and millet and the hometown of orange fruits in Guizhou after generations of development. On April 24, 2019, the people's Government of Guizhou Province formally approved Huishui County to withdraw from the sequence of poor counties.