A Lake That Had to Be Dug

Dongli Lake is a made thing, and its making has two dates. In the mid-1950s Ninghe County dug a channel called the Xindi River, and that channel is the origin of the lake. By the early 1960s the ground around it was still wasteland belonging to the Chitu commune. In the early 1970s a reservoir was built there, and the lake formed. What a visitor sees today, fifty-eight square kilometres of scenic area with eight square kilometres of water and a twelve-kilometre shoreline, is the settled result of a water project that was not designed as scenery at all.

The lake's capacity is 22 million cubic metres, which for a district with no natural lake is a considerable body of water, and it has acquired a nickname that says as much: the small ocean of fresh water. It is counted among the eight great tourist sights of Tianjin. The China Mining Federation named it a home of hot springs, and the Tianjin government made it a tourist resort area of Dongli District. That pairing of water and warm springs is what turned a reservoir into a destination, and it explains why the district's northern edge now has a resort where the 1960s had a commune's waste ground.

Dongli's other large piece of infrastructure sits a short distance away. Tianjin Binhai International Airport lies in the district about thirteen kilometres from the downtown area, and the district's own account lists it alongside the headquarters of Tianjin Airlines as the two things located there. The airport was begun in November 1939 and was the departure point of the first civil aviation route of the People's Republic in August 1950. A visitor who lands at Binhai and drives to the lake crosses a district whose identity is split between an airfield and a reservoir, with the old river landing villages between them.