In the northwest of Yinchuan City, there is a majestic and steep mountain range, with undulating peaks, filled with a group of galloping horses, galloping between the Yinchuan Plain and the Alxa Plateau from northeast to southwest, this is the famous Helan Mountain.

　　The word "Helan" comes from Mongolian and means a horse. Helan Mountain, also known as Alxa Mountain, is located between the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and the Alxa League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and is the dividing line between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. The mountains stretch for more than 250 kilometers in a north-south direction, 20-40 kilometers wide from east to west, and 60 kilometers at the widest point. The desert, facing the Yinchuan Plain in the east, seems to be a natural barrier of the Yinchuan Plain.

The petroglyphs of Helan Mountain record the life of ancient nomadic peoples in the area of ​​Helan Mountain. There are more than 1,000 petroglyphs, with more than 20,000 single patterns, distributed in more than ten mountain passes of more than 250 kilometers from Shizuishan Mountain in the north to Zhongwei in the south. Helan Mountain Pass is one of the mountain passes with many petroglyphs.
Walking about 5,000 meters north from Suyukou, you will arrive at Helankou. As you can see, there are more than 300 petroglyphs of Helan Mountain distributed on the rocky walls of the mountain stretching for more than 600 meters on both sides of the valley. The rock paintings are rough and unrestrained in shape, simple in composition, and have unique artistic conception and artistic value.

Among them, the largest number are all kinds of human faces. Many human faces are simple in shape, most of them have eyebrows, nose and mouth, but they lack a pair of eyes, which may be related to the customs and beliefs of the painting nation. There is also an intriguing and interesting phenomenon, that is, there is a silhouette of a standing person in the shape of the human face, with arms bent, legs spread apart, and a long knife at the waist, showing a totem-shaped witch as the center. This kind of unique worship and admiration is rare in other rock paintings.