Chaohu Lake
4 min readThere are numerous lakes along the Yangtze River，but only 22 lakes have an area of more than 100 square kilometers，among them is the highly reputable Chaohu Lake in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Chaohu Lake（“Nest Lake”），also called Jiaohu Lake，got its name because of its shape looks like a bird’s nest.It is located in the center of Jiang-Huai Mountains in Anhui Province，on the north side of the Yangtze River.Chaohu Lake has a vast area and is the fifth largest freshwater lake in China.
Chaohu Lake is a typical structure fault-depression lake.About 70 million years ago，the Chaohu Lake area was ruptured and formed many tunnels.These tunnels sank a lot and Chaohu Lake developed on top of them.
Until the middle of the Quaternary period，having experi-enced Himalayas Movement，climate change and new tec-tonic movement，Chaohu Lake Basin sank and water gath-ered in the basin，and created a large pool.Then，following the formation of fluctuated lakeshore area，Chaohu Lake finally shaped up. At that time, the silting up of the lake was not as serious as today; therefore it was much larger than today’s Chaohu Lake. From then on, Chaohu Lake has been shrinking incessantly, especially in the west part, which caused today’s Chaohu Lake become deep-in-west and shallow-in-east.
The rivers that join Chaohu Lake are distributed in acentripetal pattern, most of which are brooks from the mountains with relatively short length and varied volume of runoff. In the west and north part of Chaohu Lake Basin, there are more Mountain rivers with large water volume; in the south part rivers are short and with less wa-ter. Chaohu Lake has a large capacity which could greatly abate the flow of water and ease the pressure of the Yangtze River in flood season; therefore it is a large natu-ral reservoir for water storage and flood detention.
The only discharging channel of Chaohu Lake today is Yuxi River. Water in Chaohu Lake joins the Yangtze J044 The homing boats on Chaohu Lake River through Yuxi River. With the completion of key wa-ter-control project, floods in the Yangtze River present a less serious menace to the farmlands in Chaohu Lake Basin, and the problem of lacking irrigation source for farmlands is solved. In addition, the smoothness of water-ways that joins the Yangtze River is insured.
Chaohu Lake is rich in aquatic resources and is one of the major freshwater fish production base in China.A-mong the fish there is beautiful whitebait, with slim bodies and crystal-like appearance. When they swim in the water, it looks like many silver shuttles flying.A legend has it that beside Dragon King of the Crystal Palace there were two virgins, the boy called Yinguo and girl Yinhua. They were sent to the human world to investigate the situation of flood. Seeing people live a normal and happy life, theywere very envious; besides, the two were falling love with each other. Therefore, they decided to leave the Crystal Palace and got married, living the life of mortals. Enraged about their doing, the Dragon King changed them into whitebaits in a fury and didn’t allow the little whitebaits in Yinhua’s belly to be born. Yinhua, in order to protect their children, exerted all her strength and concentrated all her supernatural power onto her belly. Then she cut open her belly to spawn and died. The spawn, possessing all the power of Yinhua, were laid safely. With extreme grief, Yinguo hid the spawn, and then chose to die after Yinhua.
Because the little whitebaits were not born in a usual situ-ation, they were very frail; they not only had merely one year’s life, but also died as soon as they got out of water.
This legend is people’s imagination; however, it’s true that the life of whitebaits is very frail.
Chaohu Lake has beautiful and pleasant scenery, with the vast surface rippling and many sails floating. Looking afar, sky and water are connecting; looking near, moun-tains are reflecting on the water. In the charming and gen-tle scenery there permeates magnificence. In the center of the lake there is a luscious island called Mushan Mountain (“Old-Woman Mountain”), about which there goes around a legend: Chaohu Lake area was land originally, and a lo-cal old woman foreknew that a calamity would occur-the land was going to sink into a lake. So she and her son went to tell the local people to run away. However, her son was delayed because of that and couldn’t run away from theflood. Seeing that her son was trapped in water, the old women hurried to save him. However, she dropped one shoe on her way, and finally was also drowned in the flood. Later,a small island appeared in the lake, and that is Mushan Mountain. When looked from afar, Mushan Mountain is like a senile woman, gazing at the Ershan Mountain(“Mountain of the Son'”) on the far river. At the south of Mushan Mountain, there is a Xieshan Mountain (“Shoe Mountain”, which is the”shoe”dropped by the old woman). In order to commemorate the old woman, people built a Shengmu Temple(Saint Old woman Temple) on Mushan Mountain.
Thousands of years has passed, and has changed many things in the world. Chaohu Lake, with her broad bosom, nurtures Wanzhong Plain all the years, and brings harvest and hope for generations of people in Jiang-Huai area.
