Crustal movements its unique geological feature

The Flaming Mountains	The Flaming Mountains

The Flaming Mountains run 100 kilometers (62 miles) along the northern edge of Turpan Depression (Basin) from east to west with its extreme width of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Its highest peak is 40 kilometers (248 miles) east of the city of Turpan and 831.7 meters (2728 feet) above sea level.
Crustal movements and years of efflorescence fashion its unique geological feature. When the sun's rays beat down in mid-afternoon, the red rocks on the crisscross gullies and ravines reflect and the heat is intense as if the hillsides were engulfed by tongues of fire, hence the name.
In the famous 16th century Chinese classic novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en describing four monks in Tang dynasty adventuring the west, Xuan Zang and his companions, Piggy, Monkey and Sandy, attempted to cross the Flaming Mountains. They could not penetrate the flames and Monkey procured a magical palm-leaf fan from Princess Iron Fan, wife of the Ox Demon King (two fiction figures in the novel) and waved it 49 times, causing heavy rains to extinguish the fire. More anecdotes tell that to cross the Flaming Mountains, Monkey burnt his tail, and ever since then all monkeys have had red bottoms.