A lake carved by volcanic gushes

A volcanic lake in Zhanjiang not only offers respite from the hustle and bustle of modern living, but a feat in distilling millenniums of ecological change into rocks of strange formations and animals of mythical origins, write Raymond Zhou and Li Wenfang.

The word "volcano" conjures up the image of a lone peak topped with an ash-strewn bowl-shaped crevice. If there is water in that crater, it would be like an invisible acrobat holding a cup of tea.

Huguangyan is nothing like that. The 2.3-sq-km lake sits comfortably on the ground, surrounded by lush vegetation and hardly a hint of hilly terrains. However, 160,000 years ago explosions 100 times the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki - caused by the heating of groundwater and followed by billows of smoke and magma - erupted in this place 18 km to the southwest of what is now Zhanjiang, Guangdong province.

A trip to Huguangyan Geopark is on first sight an immersion in a subtropical landscape, and on closer examination an education about the wonders of Mother Nature and how science unlocks its secrets.

The lake is no doubt the jewel in the crown that is the 13.6-sq-km park. At an average depth of 22 meters, it is actually a "twin lake" caused by two adjacent blasts. A stretch of an island is visible as if it were a floating device, a telltale sign of what used to divide the two craters.

Technically, it is called a maar lake, named after a similar volcano-on-the-ground landform in Germany. But the original Maar Lake is much smaller while the one in Zhanjiang is the largest of its kind on Earth. In 2004, the two became "sister lakes" for the sake of scientific research. Photos of the German lake are displayed in the Volcano Museum inside the park for easy comparison.

The dragon fish and the turtle

In May 1999, a photographer took several photos of the lake. He noticed that there was a fish-shaped thing beneath the surface of the water. It looked like a giant fish, wriggling like a dark shadow. To calculate the size of the mysterious thing, he placed an object in the same spot he caught the fish on his camera and concluded that the "thing" must be around 4 meters in length.

A year earlier, some 60 students from a military academy happened to spot as many as nine "dragon fish" that fit the description of the one in the 1999 photos. In addition, they reportedly saw two black turtles about 2 meters in diameter.

Similar reports have been filed by tourists over the years. But scientists have yet to come up with an explanation what these animals are.

That has not prevented the legend from gaining popularity among the public. It goes that a turtle used to serve as the lake king's foot stand in Dongting Lake over 1,000 km to the north. One day when the king dozed off, he escaped from the underwater palace and crawled through a secret canal to Huguangyan.

At the temple next to the lake, the turtle was mesmerized by the chanting of the monks and forgot to return to his job up north. When the king woke up, he sat back and, without support, fell to the ground. Seeing the turtle was nowhere to be found, His Majesty threw himself into a fury and ordered to drive torrents to the southern lake.

Sensing imminent disaster, the turtle spewed out a pearl from his stomach, which turned into a giant rock blocking the course of the flood. The lakeside community was saved, but the turtle was transformed into a rock.

At the east entrance to the park, there now crawls a 360-ton stone turtle, 22.5-meter long, 18-meter wide and 6.3-meter tall, with a whimsical gaze in his eyes that would be a natural in a Disney cartoon. Next to him stands a 9.9-meter-high "dragon fish", a dragon's head on a fish's body in a buffoonish posture that resembles a masked ball.