Huguangyan

Huguangyan is a maar, a crater formed when rising magma met groundwater and exploded, leaving a shallow bowl rather than a cone; it filled with water and has held a lake for something like a hundred and forty thousand years. Because nothing disturbs the bottom, the sediment has accumulated in fine annual layers that give one of the longest continuous continental climate records in East Asia, and cores drilled here are studied internationally. For visitors it is a quiet round lake ringed by wooded crater walls, with a temple on the shore, walking paths, boats and a small volcano museum, set in a UNESCO Global Geopark that includes other craters on the Leizhou peninsula.

What you actually see

• The crater lake - a round maar lake inside its explosion rim.
• The lake sediments - the layered record studied for palaeoclimate.
• The shore temple - a small monastery on the crater edge.
• The geopark exhibits - volcano displays and the wider Leizhou craters.

When to go

October to April for mild dry weather; the Leizhou peninsula is hot and humid in summer with typhoon risk from July to September. Weekends bring Zhanjiang families.

Honest expectations

The scientific interest is largely invisible to visitors; what you see is a pleasant lake. Zhanjiang is far from other destinations. Interpretation is mostly in Chinese.

Nearby

Zhanjiang lies northeast; Hailing Island is along the coast east.