Brown Panda, Qingling Mountains, Shaanxi Province, China

The Qin or Qinling Mountains, formerly known as the Nanshan ("Southern Mountains") and sometimes called the "Szechuan Alps", are a major east-west mountain range in southern Shaanxi Province in the People's Republic of China. The mountains provide a natural boundary between North and South China and support a huge variety of plant and wildlife, some of which is found nowhere else on Earth.
To the north is the densely populated Wei River valley, an ancient center of Chinese civilization. To the south is the Han River valley. To the west is the line of mountains along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. To the east are the lower Funiu and Dabie Shan which rise out of the coastal plain.
The northern side of the range is prone to hot weather, however the physical barrier of the mountains mean that the land to the North has a semi-arid climate, with the lack of rich, fertile landscape that can not support a wealth of wildlife. The mountains also acted as a natural defense against nomadic invasions from the North, as only four passes cross the mountains. In the late 1990s a railway tunnel and a spiral was completed, thereby easing travel across the range.
The highest mountain in the range is Mount Taibai (Chinese: 太白山; pinyin: Tàibáishān) at 3,767 meters (12,359 ft), which is about 100 kilometers (62 mi) west of the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an and is the highest mountain in eastern China. Mount Hua (华山) (2,155 meters or 7,070 feet), Mount Li (simplified Chinese: 骊山; traditional Chinese: 驪山; pinyin: Líshān) (1,302 meters or 4,272 feet), and Mount Maiji (simplified Chinese: 麦积山; traditional Chinese: 麥積山; pinyin: Màijīshān) (1,742 meters or 5,715 feet) make up the three other significant peaks in the range.