The lake whose cold water makes fog

Dongjiang Lake is a reservoir in Zixing City, on the upper reaches of the Lei River, a tributary of the Xiang, about 38 kilometres from the centre of Chenzhou and close to the Beijing-Guangzhou railway and national highway 107. The dam that made it was built in stages between 1958 and 1992, and behind it the water spread into a lake of about 160 square kilometres, with a total storage of 9.15 billion cubic metres. It is the largest artificial lake in central and southern China, and people call it the South Dongting after the great lake to the north. The reservoir serves power generation above all, driving a 500-megawatt hydroelectric station, and it also holds water for flood control and navigation. Around it lie islands and arms, the Snake, Monkey, Crocodile and Bird islands of the Bailang scenic area, and the Swan Mountain forest park on its northeast shore, so the lake is as much a gathered landscape as a single sheet of water. The dam is a hyperbolic arch of Chinese design and construction, and when its gates open the lake pours its water into the gorge below.

The mist over Dongjiang Lake comes from its cold water. The temperature of the water in the lake is eight to twelve degrees Celsius, unusually cold, and that cold water is the reason the fish of the lake are prized, for fish that grow in cold water carry more protein and the Dongjiang fish is counted among Chenzhou's four special products. The fog itself appears at the dam, where the gates release the water: when the dike locks are opened, the green lake water dashes down into the gorge and is broken into thousands of small drops, which form a canvas of fog like silvery silk hanging over the water. So the mist is not weather alone but the work of the reservoir, the meeting of the lake's cold water and the fall through the dam's gates, a fog that the dam itself makes and that has become the image by which the lake is known. The cold of the water is what the lake is known for, and it is the same cold that raises the fog, the lake's signature meeting of cold water and air.

Dongjiang Lake is now a tourist landscape as much as a reservoir. It is well known in China as a place for tourism, vacation and rehabilitation, and it holds the country's 5A rating, the highest level of the national scenic-area scale. The lake also serves as a training base for water sports, and its upstream reaches are used for white-water rafting, a course of shoals, rapids and high drops opened in 1995 that has been reported by some one hundred television stations and confirmed as a training and competition site. Around the water the local economy has grown: the cold-water fish, the tea and the bamboo products of the area all trade on the lake's name, and the Hougu waterfalls and the revolutionary commemoration site of the Tokyo stockade lie near its shore. The reservoir that was built for power has become a destination, and the fog over its water is now the thing people come to see. The Swan Mountain forest park on its shore holds the largest community of Cathaya silver fir in the world, and the tea gardens around the lake produce the local Dog Brain tea.