question: How do mountains like the Yellow Mountains in China form?
comment: They were formed in a similar manner as other mountain ranges. Their unique shape, however, is the result of glaciation. long ago, huge sheets of ice carved the mountain range into the unique shapes that are seen today.
passages: According to the classical novel "Journey to the West", the Monkey King created a disturbance in the heavens and knocked over a kiln, causing embers to fall from the sky to the place where the Flaming Mountains are now. In a Uigur legend, a dragon lived in the Tianshan Mountains. Because the dragon ate little children, a Uigur hero slew the dragon and cut it into eight pieces. The dragon's blood turned into a scarlet mountain of blood and the eight pieces became the eight valleys in the Flaming Mountains.
  
  Section::::Climate.
   Section::::Geological history.
   With human settlement, agriculture has taken root across most of the fertile basin and reduced the original forest to small patches on hills and mountains including Mount Emei. The extensive ridges in the eastern Sichuan Basin preserve elements of the original forests. A greater variety of natural landscapes and wildlife have been at least partially preserved in the mountains surrounding the basin where human settlement has been less intensive. The natural ecosystems of these mountains have been classified by the World Wildlife Fund as the Qionglai-Minshan conifer forests to northwest and the Daba Mountains evergreen forests to the northeast and east.
   Section::::Stratigraphy.:Siwalik group.:Middle Siwalik.
   There are columnar basalt formations in Mon Hin Kong () in an area in the mountains near Na Phun, Wang Chin District, Phrae Province. In Phae Mueang Phi there are mushroom rocks and other bizarre rock formations caused by erosion.
  
  Section::::Geography.:Sub-ranges.
  
  The Phi Pan Nam range system is often divided in two physiographic longitudinal sections: 
   Residual mountains are formed as a result of erosion of an existing elevated area. They are also called mountains of denudation.
  
  Examples in Europe include: the Eastern Rhodopes, part of the Rila-Rhodope mountain massif, which is the oldest landmass on the Balkan Peninsula, the Scottish Highlands, the Scandinavian Mountains, and Snowdonia in Wales.
  
  Examples in India include: the Aravalli Range, the Nilgiri Mountains in Tamilnadu, the Rajmahal Hills, and the Eastern and Western Ghats.
  
  Section::::Models.
  
  Section::::Models.:Hotspot volcanoes.
   Section::::Mineral evolution.
   Section::::Climate.
   Section::::Stratigraphy.:Siwalik group.
  
  Section::::Stratigraphy.:Siwalik group.:Upper Siwalik.
   Section::::Mountains and paterae.
   Section::::History.
   In ancient times, the merchant traders traversing the Silk Route in southeast Asia avoided the mountains by stopping at oasis towns, such as Gaochang, built on the desert's rim at the foot of the Flaming Mountains and near an important mountain pass. Oasis towns became respite stops for traveling merchant traders.
  
  Buddhist missionaries often accompanied traders on busy international trade routes. During this time trade boomed on the Silk Route. Buddhist monasteries and temples were built in the busy trading centers and in nearby remote mountain spots.
   Section::::Types of mountains.:Fold mountains.
  
  When plates collide or undergo subduction (that is – ride one over another), the plates tend to buckle and fold, forming mountains. Most of the major continental mountain ranges are associated with thrusting and folding or orogenesis. Examples are the Balkan Mountains, the Jura and the Zagros mountains.
  
  Section::::Types of mountains.:Block mountains.
   Section::::Basin evolution.:Climate change and erosion.
   In China, the Massif includes extreme eastern Tibet, southern and western Sichuan, western Hunan, a small portion of western Guangdong, all of Guizhou and Yunnan, with north and west Guangxi. Spilling over the Southeast Asian peninsula, it covers most of the border areas of Burma with adjacent segments of northeastern India (Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland with portions of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam) and southeastern Bangladesh, the north and west of Thailand, all of Laos above the Mekong valley, borderlands in northern and central Vietnam along the Annam Cordillera, and the northeastern fringes of Cambodia.
   These mountains, with others in the Eastern Arc, were formed more than one hundred million years ago. About thirty million years ago, the area was covered by extensive rainforest. During a cooler and drier period some ten million years ago, the lowland forests were converted to savanna, leaving the mountain ranges as "islands" where the tropical forests continued to flourish. The isolation of each mountain range has led to a great deal of endemism, and a very diverse flora and fauna. 
  
  Section::::Flora and fauna.
   Section::::Corn Creek Orogeny.
   Section::::Large areas of loess deposits and soils.:China.
   Section::::Geology.:Metamorphic core complexes.
   Section::::Hydrology.
  
  Section::::Hydrology.:Catchment area.
   Section::::Orography and relief.
   Section::::Geography.:Gallatin Petrified Forest.
   Section::::The Five Great Mountains.:Nature conservation.
   Two watercourses pass through or by the ranges: Hovells Creek originates in the western parts of the ranges, while Little River flows around the ranges to the north and east.
  
  Section::::Geology.
  
  Contrary to popular belief, the You Yangs are not the remains of a volcano. They are an inselberg or monadnock, and the granite that forms them was originally a mass of magma that had worked its way up into the surrounding sedimentary rocks during the Devonian period, when the land surface in Victoria was several kilometers higher than today.
   One of the largest laccoliths in the United States is Pine Valley Mountain in the Pine Valley Mountain Wilderness area near St. George, Utah.
  
  Section::::Problems reconstructing shapes of intrusions.
  