The Lake Made of Springs

Daming Lake lies just north of the old city centre, and the first thing to understand about it is that it is not a lake in the ordinary sense. It is the overflow of Jinan's spring system. Water from the Black Tiger, Baotu, Wulongtan and Zhenzhu spring groups empties into it, together with rainfall and the runoff of the western moat, and the lake keeps a fairly constant level through the year. After dredging in 2010 it covers 0.58 square kilometres, averages 2 metres in depth and holds about 830,000 cubic metres. The reason it works is geological: the bed is impermeable igneous rock, so the spring water cannot drain away. In heavy rain it does not rise much; in drought it does not empty. At the North Water Gate the water finally leaves for the Xiaoqing River and the Bohai Sea.

The lake was first named after Daming Temple, which stood on its edge. Li Daoyuan described it in the Water Classic Commentary in the Northern Wei; the Tang called it the Lotus Seed Lake; in the Northern Song the writer Zeng Gong, governor of Qizhou, called it the West Lake and the North Lake. The name Daming Lake was restored by the poet Yuan Haowen in the Jin dynasty and has been used ever since. Marco Polo saw it on his travels and wrote of the gardens and the hills meeting the water without pause. The couplet over the park gate compresses the whole arrangement into one line: lotuses on four sides and willows on three, half the city hills and half the city lake. It is less a caption than a plan of the place.

The lake is ringed with pavilions built to remember people who came here. The Lixia Pavilion marks the spot where the Tang poet Du Fu was entertained in 745 by Li Yong, governor of Beihai, together with the famous men of Jinan; the pavilion was rebuilt in 1693 and carries inscriptions by the Qing calligrapher He Shaoji. The Xiaocanglang Pavilion, built in 1792 inside the Iron Duke shrine, copies the Canglang Pavilion of Suzhou. In 1955 the lake became a public park, and work between 2007 and 2009 added eight sections and raised the park from 74 to 103.4 hectares. Daming Lake Park is free to enter, the only one of the city's three great sights that is — a deliberate choice for a lake that belongs to the springs rather than to a ticket office.