Bayan Har Mountains

"Bayankala" redirects here. For the skincare line, see Bayankala (skincare).

The Bayan Har Mountains, formerly known as the Bayen-káras^[2] or Bayan-Kara-Ula, are a mountain range in Qinghai Province, northwest China. The name is Mongolian for "Rich and Black".^[3] It can be viewed as one of the branches of the Kunlun Mountains. It separates the drainage areas of both the Yellow and the Yangtze rivers. The source of the Yellow River is the Yueguzonglie Basin (Gyaring-Ngoring Lakes), which is located in the northern part of the range.^[4]

Bayan Har Mountains
Yaonü Lake, Nianbaoyuze Geopark, Jigzhi County, Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
Geography
Location	Qinghai, China

Bayan Har Mountains
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	巴顏喀拉山脈
Simplified Chinese	巴颜喀拉山脉[a]
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Bāyánkālā Shānmài Wade–Giles Pa-yan-k‘a-la Shan-mai IPA [pá.jɛ̌n.kʰá.lá ʂán.mâɪ]
Tibetan name
Tibetan	བ་ཡན་ཁ་ལ་རག་མོ
Mongolian name
Mongolian Cyrillic	Баянхар уул
Mongolian script	ᠪᠠᠶᠠᠨ‎ᠬᠠᠷ᠎ᠠ ᠠᠭᠤᠯᠠ

In popular culture

The wizard Shang Ko in Barbara Hambly's fantasy Bride of the Rat God (1994) is described by his grandson as "the greatest of the mages of China, the last of the line of sorcerers of the Bayan Har Shan".

The Bayan Har mountain range is also mentioned in the first episode of the anime Ranma ½ (1989), based on the manga series by Rumiko Takahashi, when Ranma and his father take a trip through China in order to perfect their martial training. In the story, they are both cursed by the (fictional) magical springs of Jusenkyo, which sets up the main running gag of the series.

Notes

1. Formerly also 巴颜喀喇山脉.^[1]

References

1. p. 628.
2. "China" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed. 1878.
3. Sułek, Emilia Róża (2014), "Invisible Mongols: Observations from Fieldwork in Tibet" (PDF), A Window onto the Other: Contributions on the Study of the Mongolian, Turkic, and Manchu-Tungusic Peoples, Languages, and Cultures, Warsaw: University of Warsaw, p. 248.
4. "The source of the Yellow River" Archived November 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Yellow River Conservancy Commission.

External links

34°42′N 98°13′E