Poyang Lake

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Leaning against the mountain，Poyang Lake is like the skirt of Lushan，light and soft，never shy of showing her beauty and grace.

Wandering at the lakeside，one will hear the fisherman singing and the wild goose honking，and see the sails flowing on the vast and misty lake.The poet Wang Bo of the Tang dynasty（618-907）distilled the essence of the whole scenery with one sentence，“A lone wild duckwith the sunset clouds fly；the autumn river mirrors the color of the sky”，which was highly regarded and widely quoted by the later generations.With such wonderful scenery，even a normal day will be colorful.

Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China，which receives five big rivers and joins the Yangtze River in Hukou of Jiangxi.The water level of Poyang Lake rises or falls sharply，making Poyang Lake become“ample”or “slim”accordingly.In the period of high water，Poyang Lake behaves like a naughty boy，billowing and surging，and“growing up”rapidly，with the quick increase in its size. In the period of low water, Poyang Lake appears like an aged person, silent and mild, revealing many shoals, large or small, on the originally vast lake there remains on-ly a few winding channels, in sight there is nothing but scene of desolation. The two totally different scenes in-spired the saying of “a vast expanse in high water and a slim line in low water”that describes Poyang Lake.

The Poyang Lake in the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279) is roughly the same as the Poyang Lake today in terms of area and shape. We could say that the appear-ance of Poyang Lake today was established at that time. In the Yuan dynasty(1206-1368), the bottom of the lake sank and greatly enlarged the area of Poyang Lake, andmade it the peak period in Poyang Lake’s development.

After the Qing dynasty(1616-1911), the once sinking lake area returned to rise, and gradually the construction ruins submerged with the previous lake area sank began to ap-pear again. People who didn’t know the fact even thought that it was the ancient and mysterious underwater cities that had emerged from the water.

Poyang Lake is still rising till today. The lake bottom is higher and higher and the lake surface is shrinking in-cessantly. In addition, before the establishment of the Peo-ple’s Republic of China in 1949, the despotic landlords near Poyang Lake, pursuing their own benefits, built dikes to reclaim land from the water, resulting in the shrinking of Poyang Lake at a striking speed. Poyang Lake is like afairy who came down to the earth but wants to go back to the heavenly world because she can’t bear the grime of the human world; however, she is also reluctant to leave and still lingering. Poyang Lake shrinks not as fast as DongtingLake and is comparatively less silted up; it is indisputably the largest freshwater lake in China.

The scenery of “Hulu-jing”(neck of the cucurbit) in Poyang Lake has a unique style. There is a Dagu Moun-tain, which is an isolated rock island, corresponding with another small stone island at a distance. One side of Dagu Mountain is higher than the other, so when it is looked from afar, it is just like an embroidered shoe of maid that step slightly on the vast water, which really arouses much imagination. Who knows if the girl who left her shoe here is indescribably beautiful and striking? Therefore many legends were inspired from this “embroidered shoe”. Ac-cording to a legend,a goddess called Dagu once had a rest at the side of Poyang Lake, and with a sudden impulse, she took off her shoes to put her feet in the water. Maybe she was too infatuated with the charming scenery of Poyang Lake, or maybe she was delighted in the limpid and re-freshing water,a shoe was washed away to the center ofthe lake when she didn’t notice. Later, that shoe became the “Shoe Mountain”. Besides, there is another legend about love. It is said that goddess Dagu encountered a mortal fisherman at the side of Poyang Lake. The two fell.

Dagu Mountain

in love with each other at first sight and got married. But a local despot coveted the beauty of Dagu and intended to take Dagu by force. It happened that at the same time Jade Emperor found out Dagu’s marriage with a mortal and was too enraged. He sent troops to bring Dagu back to the Heavenly Palace. The despot took the chance and captured Dagu’s husband, intending to do harm to him. However, on her way back to the Heavenly Palace, Dagu saw this and, being too worried, exerted all her strength to throwone of her shoes down. The shoe held the despot under it and saved Dagu’s husband. Later, this shoe became the “Shoe Mountain”and stood on the vast lake forever, wit-nessing the love between Dagu and the fisherman. Of course, legend is only people’s beautiful imagination. In fact, the Shoe Mountain is a megalith that floated from Lushan Mountain in the remote antiquity. Eroded by the running water over centuries, it has developed into today’s graceful shape.

The water of Poyang Lake flows all the year round, without frozen period in winter. The lake has very vast beach and exuberant float grass, therefore Poyang Lakehas an abundant fish resources. Among the fishermen in Poyang Lake there goes round a legend about the origin of anchovy. It is said that one day several craftsman were building a boat at the side of Poyang Lake and suddenly they saw the great carpenter Lu Ban coming by. Theystopped doing their work and invited him for lunch warm-heartedly. Since these boat-building craftsmen were not rich, they could only offer Lu Ban a simple meal. Lu Ban did not mind at all and he even offered to treat the craftsmen with fish. He grasped a handful of wood shav-ings, scattered them into the lake and threw mud to press them into the water. Suddenly, the wood shavings all be-came fish. People delightedly called these fish the”bao-hua fish””wood-shaving fish”), or the “feng-wei fish” (“phoenix tail fish”or anchovy).

The cranes and birds on Poyang Lake At every turn of autumn and winter, thousands of mi-gratory birds fly from Siberia of Russia, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, northeast and north China to Poyang Lake, and staytill the next spring. Poyang Lake also hosts the largest white crane flock in the world, therefore it is known as the “white crane’s world”and the “kingdom of rare birds”.