The study of marginal areas of Tibetan Plateau, especially of gravels, can help to understand and constrain the evolution and mechanism of the uplift of the plateau. In this study, the Cenozoic gravels in Xiaohonggou section, which is located in the piedmont of Xiang Shan, northeast of Tibetan Plateau, has been chosen to conduct gravel counting. Based on the counting data, gravels in upper segment of Sikouzi Formation, lower and upper segments of Hongliugou Formation, Quaternary and present riverbed, appear to be mainly sandstone and quartz sandstone, which is similar to the lithology in Xiang Shan, indicating they came from Xiang Shan area. The gravels are mainly pebbles and cobbles, sub-rounded and sub-angular, and well sorted to moderately well sorted. The ratio of the length of maximum axis to the minimum axis ranges 1 to 2. The grain-size distribution seems to be mainly fine skewed and leptokurtic normal distributing. These characters shows all the gravels have experienced similar transport processes. It is interpreted that the gravels was formed by the alluvial fans moderate distance far from the Xiang Shan. The ages of the gravels have been constrained by magnetostratigraphical work conducted in adjacent Hejiakouzi section. This indicates that there has been a relatively high relief in the Xiang Shan, northeast of Tibetan Plateau, when the Sikouzi Formation deposited (Eocene). During Oligocene, when the Qingshuiying Formation deposited, the existing high relief had been eroded. The second high relief of Xiang Shan occurred during early to middle Miocene, when the Hongliugou Formation deposited. During the deposition of Ganhegou Formation (later Miocene to Pliocene), Xiang Shan area experienced another tectonically stable period. The latest uplift event happened in Pleistocene. The high relief in Xiang Shan during Eocene might be caused by the impact of tectonic events during the later Cretaceous and early Cenozoic. The second high relief during early to middle Miocene can be related to the impact of India-Asian collision. These imply that the uplift of the northeast of Tibetan Plateau happened much earlier than previously proposed, and this area has experienced periods of uplift.