Dongli Lake

Dongli Lake (东丽湖) is not a natural lake. It began as the Xindi River canal, dug by Ninghe County in the mid-1950s; in the early 1960s the ground was wasteland belonging to a commune, and in the early 1970s a reservoir was built there, which is how the lake came to exist. The scenic area now covers 58.6 square kilometres with eight square kilometres of water, a twelve-kilometre shoreline and a capacity of 22 million cubic metres. It is called the small ocean of fresh water, is counted among the eight great tourist sights of Tianjin, and has been named a home of hot springs and made a tourist resort area of Dongli District.