KHINGAN, two mountain ranges in east Asia consisting of Great Khingan and Little Khingan. Great Khingan, a tilted fault-block, trends north-north-east by south-south-west, and stretches through 15° of latitude from the northern border of Shansi province in China as far as the northern bend of the Amur river, so forming the easternmost bastion of the high Mongolian plateau, the surface of which slopes upwards to the axis of the Khingan, feet. Suess regarded it as the edge of the ancient archean core of north central Asia which he termed Angaraland. This buttressing range, whose highest slopes and valleys are forested, also forms the western "wall" of the Man churian basin. The base of its gradual western slope lies at an altitude of 3,00o ft., but to the east the range falls more rapidly to the plains of central Manchuria whose undulations are partly caused by projecting spurs from the Great Khingan. It forms one
of the most important orographical divides in Asia, for it inter cepts the moisture-laden south-east winds and is thus a main fac tor in the contrast between fertile Manchuria on one hand and arid Mongolia on the other. Several outlying ranges on its eastern fringe give it the form of a terraced escarpment ; the whole sys tem is from 8o to ioo m. wide.
Little Khingan range trends from west to east and separates the Sungari valley from that of the Amur. It may be regarded as an offshoot of the Great Khingan, and like its parent range consists of old archean schists and igneous rocks. It is probably continued to the north-east by the Bureya mountains and Dusse-alin across the Amur river which, in this section of its course, is transverse, piercing terraced scarps with the south-west by north-east trend characteristic of Trans-Baikalia.