Jing Shan

You’ve heard of the tallest mountain in the world, but have you heard of the shortest? Jing Shan is a mountain in China’s Shandong Province that is slightly under 2 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Most people who see it would think that it’s just a big rock, but in China, it’s officially classified as a mountain.

For centuries, people from Shandong Province considered Jing Shan a mountain. It was thought to be an underground mountain, with all but the summit below the surface. A local legend said that a woman urinated on the mountain and caused it to stop growing.

In 1957, the Chinese government decided to dig around Jing Shan to determine if it was indeed a mountain, or just a rock. They could not dig deep enough to find the bottom, so it was officially labeled a mountain. The Chinese government suggests that the mountain is 157 feet tall, which would mean it is one of the shortest mountains, but not the very shortest, in the world, but there’s no way to be certain how deep it goes, and there’s no way to find out, as digging around the mountain is now forbidden.