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.
Qujing is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Yunnan Province, located in the east of Yunnan Province, at the source of the Pearl River, at the junction of Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces and regions, known as "the key of Yunnan and Guizhou" and "Yunnan throat". It is 120km away from the provincial capital Kunming and covers an area of 28900 square kilometers, accounting for 13.63% of the area of Yunnan Province. As of April 2018, Qujing City has jurisdiction over 1 city, 3 districts and 5 counties. At the end of 2016, the total registered population of the city was 6.5297 million. Qujing is located in the Wumeng Mountains of the transitional zone from the eastern Yunnan plateau to the western Guizhou plateau in the middle of the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau. The west is embedded with the lake basin area of the central Yunnan plateau, the eastern part is gradually inclined to the Guizhou Plateau, and the central part is a watershed zone between the Yangtze River and the Pearl River. The terrain is high in the northwest and low in the southeast. There are eight unique languages of Yi, Buyi, Zhuang, Miao and Yao.