A 2023 cultural essay places the lake within walking distance of the former Southwest Associated University campus and recalls its place in student life during the war years. It also describes two embankments: Ruan Causeway, built during the Daoguang reign, and Tang Causeway, added in the early Republic. The lake is therefore both landscape and urban construction.
From the journal
Around Green Lake, How Kunming Holds Its Urban Memory
Green Lake is a small body of water with an unusually dense urban archive around its edges.
In the same city · Kunming ↗Around Green Lake, How Kunming Holds Its Urban Memory
Causeways and nearby institutions
Nearby are the Yunnan Military Academy and the Southwest Associated University site, among other memorial and educational institutions. Their proximity makes the neighborhood a connected civic landscape rather than a list of monuments. The lake does not tell one single story: its uses and institutions changed across political periods.
Ruan and Tang Causeways divide the lake into a sequence of edges and crossings. The Southwest Associated University campus stood only hundreds of metres away, making Green Lake part of student leisure during the war years; the nearby Yunnan Military Academy adds a different institutional history to the same walkable district.