The Yun Range () are a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...

running north–south in northwestern

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. They were formerly

romanized In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...

as the Yun Ling and tautologically as the Yun-ling Mountains. The Yun Range runs between the

Lancang River The Mekong or Mekong River ( , ) is a transboundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth-longest river and the third-longest in Asia with an estimated length of and a drainage area of , discharging of wat ...

(Mekong) to the west and

Jinsha River The Jinsha River (, Classical Tibetan, Tibetan: Dri Chu, འབྲི་ཆུ, ) or Lu river, is the Chinese name for the upper stretches of the Yangtze River. It flows through the provinces of the PRC, provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yu ...

(Yangtze) to the east. The range is a major component of the greater

Hengduan Mountains The Hengduan Mountains () are a group of mountain ranges in southwest China, southwest China that connect the southeast portions of the Tibetan Plateau with the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. The Hengduan Mountains are primarily large north-south ...

. In historic times, the Yun Ling referred more broadly to all mountains south and west of the

Sichuan Basin The Sichuan Basin (), formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tributar ...

. At times, the name was applied to the Min Mountains, Qionglai Mountains,

Daxue Mountains The Daxue Range or Daxue Mountains () are a great mountain range in the western part of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It is part of the Hengduan Mountains, a complicated system of mountain ranges of western Sichuan, which itself is adjacen ...

and other ranges in the Hengduan Mountains. In this context the province of Yunnan, meaning "south of cloud ountains, was named after the Yun Range. The Yunling Mountains Nature Reserve in Lanping County in

Nujiang Prefecture Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in northwestern Yunnan, China. The titular ethnic group is the Lisu people, who make up nearly half of the prefecture's population. The state is long and narrow, with an area of 14,5 ...

is part of the

Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas The Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas () is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Yunnan province, China. It lies within the drainage basins of the upper reaches of the Jinsha (Yangtze), Lancang (Mekong) and Nujiang ( Salween) rivers, in ...

and a habitat for the endangered black snub-nosed monkey.

References

External links

Yunling MountainsYun Ling at Multimap
Mountain ranges of Yunnan World Heritage Sites in China {{Yunnan-geo-stub