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.
Wuyang County, located in the south-central part of Henan Province, is under the jurisdiction of Luohe City, facing Yuanhui District and Yecheng District in the east, Ye County in the west, Wugang City in the south and Xiangcheng County in the north. It has jurisdiction over 4 townships and 10 towns and 398 administrative villages. The county has a total area of 777square kilometers and a population of 600000. It is a thousand-year-old county and old revolutionary base county, and it is the first provincial poverty-stricken county to get rid of poverty after the establishment of the exit mechanism of poverty alleviation in Henan Province. Han Fan Kui, Wu Han, Sima Yi of the three Kingdoms once sealed Hou here, known as "Emperor Xiang Hou Kingdom". The Jiahu site in the territory has 10 of the largest in the world. Jiahu culture pushed the history of Chinese civilization forward to 9000 years ago and is known as the first dawn of human civilization. Wuyang peasant painting is famous at home and abroad, it is the first batch of intangible cultural heritage in Henan Province, it is the hometown of Chinese modern folk painting, folk culture and art, and it is the hometown of the whole country.