Baiyangdian spreads across Anxin and neighbouring counties in the low centre of Hebei, fed by rivers coming off the Taihang mountains. Its open water is broken into channels by reed beds and lotus, and the villages inside it live by fishing, weaving mats and collecting lotus. In the war against Japan the reeds sheltered guerrilla units, and the lake is now also the water landscape beside the Xiong'an new area.
Baiyangdian is the largest freshwater lake in northern China, a shallow basin where more than 3,700 channels connect 146 stretches of water. Its fishing villages weave mats from the reed beds, and the same reeds once hid a guerrilla squadron from Japanese columns.