Taihu Lake
4 min readBillowing the Yangtze River flows further eastward and meets a large lake on the broad and even plain of the Yangtze River Delta.This lake，round in south and west and sunken in east and north，is just like a half-moon.It is Taihu Lake.Taihu Lake is situated in the southof Jiangsu Province，and its south side borders Zhejiang Province.Following Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake，Taihu Lake is the third largest freshwater lake in China.
Taihu Lake
About the formation of Taihu Lake, there are many different opinions, which add more to the mysterious as-pect of Taihu Lake.
There used to be some Chinese and foreign geogra-phers who considered that Taihu Lake was formed be-cause of the silting up of the Yangtze River. And some other geographers brought forward the theory that lagoon The bird’s-eye view of Taihu Lake was the cause of Taihu Lake. This theory said that in the surrounding area of Taihu Lake there used to be a series of faults, rendering Taihu Lake into a gulf. The sand and silt deposited from the Yangtze River sealed the lake in to-day’s Taihu Plain into a lagoon, and the sand and silt dis-charged from the rivers in mountain area desalted the lake water and divided it into several pools. Today’s Taihu Lake is the largest lake left from the course of division of the primitive Taihu Lake. There are also some scholars holding the opinion that Taihu Plain was an ancient land but not lagoon. The rivers in the hilly land in southwest of Taihu Lake were blocked in their way to joining other rivers or the sea, so they changed their routes to gather in Taihu Lake region. If the rivers flew smoothly, then the lake area in Taihu Plain would shrink and there would be fewer lakes; if the rivers were blocked or obstructed, then the lake area would expand. In the 8th century, the dis-charge of rivers were more and more obstructed, therefore the area of Taihu Lake enlarged gradually and large part of Taihu Plain was studded with lakes. After the 10th centu-ry, with the improvement of people’s exploitation ability, waterway network began to form gradually. After many times of regulation and control, Huangpu River became the main discharge watercourse for Taihu Lake in the late Yuan dynasty (1206-1368), therefore the lake area of Tai-hu Lake was reduced to the size of today. Some people al-so held the opinion that Taihu Lake was first hit by an an-cient aerolith into a large hole, and later it became a lake after accumulating water.
There is also a legend about Taihu Lake with Monkey King Sun Wukong as the protagonist: on the birthday of Queen Mother of the Western Heavens, Jade Emperor gave her a large jade tray as birthday present. The jade tray was carved with fish, shrimps and beautiful stones at the bottom and inlayed with all kinds of extraordinary and col-orful precious stones. Queen Mother of the Western Heav-ens was very glad and showed it to all the gods at the ban-quet. At that time, Sun Wukong, enraged of not being in-vited, came up to make havoc in the heaven. With a bran-dish of the Gold-Banded Cudgel, the great jade tray was broken and fell onto the earth, then turned into the beauti-ful Taihu Lake, with the images of fish, shrimps and beau-tiful stones carved at the bottom all become true.
Taihu Lake is inlaid shallow in the plain area of South China. The lake area is low and even, with lakes andrivers interwoven as a network. The terrain of Taihu Lake basin is just opposite to the west-high and east-low terrain of the whole land-it slants from the east to west. And with a rather flat bottom, the lake basin is just like a shal-low tray.
The water of Taihu Lake joins the Yangtze River mainly through Huangpu River in the east.
Since ancient times, Taihu Lake has always been the important base of freshwater fishery in China, with small fishes as prime resources. The anchovy, whitebait and white shrimp in Taihu Lake enjoys a great reputation both at home and abroad, and are called the “Three Treasures of Taihu Lake”.
The climate in Taihu Lake area is mild and moist, agreeable all the year round, with the special style and fea-tures of the area that abounds in rivers and lakes.
Taihu Lake is very beautiful; its beautifulscenery of mountains silhouetted in the lake can be rated as the best among the famous lakes in China. Xishan Mountain is the most beautiful island in Taihu Lake, with flowers and fruit trees all over. Xishan Mountain also pro-duces exquisite and precious Taihu Stone, which is the limestone corroded by water for thousands and millions of years. They are the excellent ornamental stones for the ar-tificial rockwork in gardens of South China.
Since the ancient antiquity, Taihu Lake has been nur-turing the people in Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province, and helping create the prosperous and affluent Jiang-Zhe area(the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang).
Taihu Lake, with comeliness in vastness and with del-icacy in grandeur, attracts numerous peoples’ deep long-ing; and innumerable scholars have left plenty of beautiful writings and paintings, which add to the landscape scenery much more interest and charm.
