Rocky rainbows' cultural colors
Geography and anthropology mix to paint Zhangye's multihued mountains' vibrant allure, Erik Nilsson reports.
Gansu province's Rainbow Mountains live up to their colorful name-and the various names that live within them.
That's not only because the 50-square-kilometer range in the Qilian Mountains' foothills on the edge of Zhangye city takes its appellation from its multihued striations. (It's a trend to share photos of the peaks with the hashtag, "#nofilter".)
But also, its individual landforms have been imbued with colorful names tinted with culture, such as A Supernatural Tortoise Looking Up at the Sky, Small Potala Palace and Monks Worshiping Buddha.