Xiaonanhai Lake 小南海

About Xiaonanhai Lake

The lake lies in Qianjiang District, which borders Xianfeng County in Hubei to the east. On 10 June 1856 an earthquake on the boundary between Xiaonanhai and Xianfeng broke, tore and hurled the hillside across the Laojiao stream, which ran from east to west, blocking it and forming the lake. The water now covers 2.87 square kilometres, runs about 5,000 metres long and at most 900 metres wide, and is 30 metres deep on average and 60 metres at its deepest. In February 2001 the State Seismological Bureau approved a national-level protection area here for typical earthquake relics, together with a science-education base for earthquake preparedness and disaster mitigation, and in March 2004 the Ministry of Land and Resources approved Xiaonanhai as one of the third batch of national geoparks.

The geopark as a whole covers 104.57 square kilometres and falls into three areas: Xiaonanhai, Houba and Bamianshan. The Xiaonanhai area, 59.04 square kilometres, is the one built around the earthquake remains, while Bamianshan, 28.27 square kilometres, is a karst landscape. What the park lists as surviving from 1856 includes the collapse masses called Dakuayan and Xiaokuayan, the rockfall dam at Haikou, the lake itself, a submerged forest, drowned peaks that now stand as islands, the Qianjiang fault zone, ground fissures and signs of slope deformation.

What to look for

• The Haikou dam, the natural barrier of tumbled rock about 1,170 metres long, about 67.5 metres high and 1,040 metres wide at its base, made up mainly of sandstone, shale and mudstone boulders of the Silurian Luoreping Formation.
• Dakuayan, one of the two collapse masses the park lists among its earthquake features: a regular triangle about 200 metres wide at the base and about 120 metres high, in siltstone and shale of the same Silurian formation.
• The peaks the lake drowned, which now stand out of the water as islands, and the submerged forest beneath it.
• The Qianjiang fault zone, with the ground fissures and slope deformation that the park counts among the surviving ground effects of the earthquake.

Location & getting there

Getting to Xiaonanhai Lake

Confirm the visitor entrance and which boat or walking routes operate on your date. Rainfall, water levels and weather can change access.

• Search for 小南海 with 重庆市 and 黔江区.