Nashan is an extinct volcano less than 100 kilometers away from the center of Nanjing City. Its existence has refreshed the geological concept of Jiangnan.

Although "Nanjing has been seen in China for nearly 600 years", the basalt stone pillars on Nashan tell the origin of the topography of East China. Its life history is fixed in the Cenozoic Era, and the tertiary volcanic eruption occurred 5 to 10 million years ago.

The name "Nashan" comes from the verb "Na". You can imagine the action of "signing the contract, pressing your fingerprint". Viewed from a high altitude, the Nashan mountain is like a giant's finger print left on a piece of mud. This pressure creates a sinkhole, which is the crater of the volcano.

Nashan Mountain is only 146 meters high, but it is the second highest peak in Central China. Column-jointed rocks all over Nashan reveal that the volcano emerged from water.

The basaltic rocks in the earth's crust are turned into boiling magma by geothermal heat. They overflow from the crater to the outside of the surface. When encountering Yangtze River water or heavy rain, they shrink and crack sharply, forming a stone strip like KFC fries. Local people once did not know the reason and called it Shizhu Mountain.

With Nashan as the boundary, many water systems in the north are the Huaihe River Basin, and the Yangtze River Basin in the south. During the Cenozoic era, most of East China was a vast ocean. Volcanic eruptions raised the ground. Coupled with the sediment that continued to wash down from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the land continued to stretch eastward over time.

Although Nashan is small, it is a landmark mountain at the mouth of the Yangtze River hundreds of millions of years ago, witnessing the gradual rise of East China to the sea level. However, the origin of Nashan's "volcano" was not discovered until the end of the last century.

Artificial mountains, quarrying and sand exposed columnar joints. Then geologists further discovered five nearby parasitic craters based on a clear volcanic eruption sequence (including a series of geological phenomena such as faults, collapses, intrusions, and eruption unconformity).

Nashan is an encyclopedia of volcanoes. There are complete eruption cycles of volcanic eruption facies, overflow facies, channel facies and subvolcanic facies; basalt stone pillars have four different joint forms (arc joints, shear joints, oblique joints, longitudinal joints, usually only one can be seen). Walking closer to the scene, every wonderful scene turned into thrilling scenes under the vivid descriptions of the tour guide. I couldn't help but touch the cross section of the stone pillar with my hand, and the residual temperature seemed to have not disappeared.

The strange-shaped stone pillars on Nashan make people feel tired of seeing and dreaming. For this reason, a coffee bar with light food is built under each group of pillars. Through the window, accompanied by soothing music, I fantasize about hundreds of millions of years of flowers blooming, spring, summer, autumn and winter, the birth of mankind, and the vicissitudes of the world... The study atmosphere is relaxed and pleasant.

Cylindrical joints bring visual enjoyment, volcanic eruptions explain the topography of Jiangnan, and the volcanic flavor of Nashan is hidden in the tea garden on the top of the mountain. Because volcanoes in Jiangsu Province are very rare, volcanic tea production is limited and is particularly precious.

Although the soil in Nashan smells of hot flint, the volcanic tea has a refreshing and faint fragrance. The Nashan soil is essentially volcanic ash. After hundreds of millions of years of oxidation and plant decay, it has become fertile land. Volcanic ash is rich in trace elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, magnesium, calcium and selenium, making it especially suitable for the growth of tea trees. Long before it was identified as a volcano, the state-owned Nashan Tea Experimental Ground finally cultivated volcanic tea of unique quality after thousands of experiments.

Stopping and resting, learning and thinking, it took an afternoon to complete a complete walk around Nashan. The last stop came to the strange-looking Nashan Geological Museum. The whole thing is like a whirlpool snail, half above ground and half underground, with curved internal walls. Modern sound and light films are used to create different spaces to tell the story of the earth and the volcano... Finally, the image museum A "A Brief History of Time" is a wonderful summary to end the journey to Nashan.

You don't have to travel all the way to Iceland or Japan, there is a good volcanic sample bank at your doorstep. Nashan is located in Yizheng City, Yangzhou, next to Liuhe District, Nanjing. The Geopark has attracted attention because it has recently been listed as a 4A scenic spot. Tsering Jun, who likes volcanoes, took his children from Nanjing to Yangzhou on this late autumn weekend. He deliberately passed by Nashan, and finally discovered the rich and diverse secrets of the ancient Yangzhou hot springs. Nashan is the first stop on a tour of Yangzhou, and the volcanic miracle is enough to serve as the front hall and title page of beautiful Yangzhou.