What exactly is Shanxi Black Granite, and where does it come from?

Shanxi Black (山西黑) is a premium black granite quarried primarily in Hunyuan County, Shanxi Province, in northern China. Geologically, it is actually a diabase (or diabase-gabbro), an igneous rock composed mainly of plagioclase feldspar and pyroxene with a fine-grained crystalline structure. The quarry area is part of a geological formation stretching roughly 1,000 kilometers from Fengzhen in Inner Mongolia through the Datong mountains down to Fuping in Hebei Province. It is also known by other names such as Imperial Black, Taibai Qing (太白青), Beiyue Black, or Night Rose in Japan.