The region

The Shanxi Black is mostly extracted around the city of Hunyuang, which is located in the Shanxi province. The name Shanxi literally means "mountain's west", which refers to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, and Inner Mongolia to the north.

For centuries Shanxi served as the center of trade and banking, with the term "Shanxi Merchant" once synonymous with wealth. Due to Shanxi's geographic location in the Great China and its natural environment, Shanxi was the richest province in Zhongyuan or Center China.


Shanxi possesses 260 billion metric tons of known coal deposits, about one third of China's total. As a result, Shanxi is a leading producer of coal in China, with annual production exceeding 300 million metric tonnes.

Industry in Shanxi is centered around heavy industries such as coal and chemical production, power generation, and metal refining. Shanxi is also famous for its well-known black granite: the Shanxi Black.

The granite

The Shanxi Black is mostly extracted around the city of Hunyuang, which is located in the Shanxi province. It is mostly extracted by several quarries with medium to large dimension, where blocks extracted can normally have small to medium sizes. It is also common to find large blocks. It is estimated that there are considerably large reserves of this black granite for future extraction, but further studies on this field need to be done.

The Shanxi Black is the reference Chinese black granite, with a large market in China and abroad. It has gained reputation abroad and is today competing side by side with other reference black coloured natural stones.

Overall analysis

The Shanxi Black is the reference black granite and natural stone from China. Shanxi Black is today synonym of quality. In fact its reputation is well deserved. This is a beautiful black coloured granite, with a deep black colour. It shines perfectly and can do an amazing job in different types of applications.

However, it is important to say that the Shanxi Black may present some problems in terms of selection, where the high quality grade can be fairly expensive and the low grade can be easily sold as if it is high grade. Despite this, the Shanxi Black will continue to be the reference black coloured granite from China.