Shijiu Lake

Merge note (2026-09-30): this is the single entry for the one place Shijiu Lake. The culture site formerly carried a second "Shijiu Lake" under the id ls:place:shijiuhu; under the principle that a place has one entry it has been merged into this one. That entry was framed as "a lake in the south-western part of Hefeng Town", and the dependence of the people on the lake and the dancing ground recorded in the folk customs page and the intangible heritage project page, together with the dating clue from the Kangxi gazetteer's phrase "the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake", were not held here before; its figures for area and shoreline were already recorded more fully on this site. The old id ls:place:shijiuhu is retired and the single id is now ls:place:shijiu-lake. The administrative divisions and place names of the villages along the lake belong to the towns site and are not written here.

Overview

Shijiu Lake lies in the south of Lishui District. It is the boundary lake between Lishui, Gaochun and Dangtu in Anhui, and one of the district's three catchments. Its area is given in two ways: 207.65 sq km on the district government's geographical position page, with 90.4 sq km within Lishui District, and a total area of 214.7 sq km in both the Nanjing Municipal People's Government's reply of 2023 and the Lishui District Water Bureau's reply of 2025. This entry takes 207.65 sq km for its area field and sets the other figures side by side under Open questions.

A second figure for the part within Lishui, 91.2 sq km, comes with a shoreline of 29.31 km in the Lishui District People's Government's reply of 2023. The lake has a mean depth of 1.67 m, a maximum depth of 2.42 m and a capacity of 3.4 100 million m³ (Nanjing Municipal Water Bureau, 24 October 2025).

The lake belongs to the Shijiu Lake basin. The district government's geographical position page records that the district divides by catchment into 464.82 sq km in the Qinhuai basin and 599.39 sq km in the Shijiu Lake basin, with only 2.73 sq km of hill country in the south-east corner belonging to the western Taihu region; the basin value in this entry follows that division.

Three towns and subdistricts are involved, each on its own evidence: the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Natural Resources' notice of confirmed registration of January 2026 records that the registered unit of Shijiu Lake borders Honglan Subdistrict to the north and Hefeng Town to the east; the district government's Jingqiao Town page records that Jingqiao Town faces Shijiu Lake on its west. Hefeng Town's area of 198 sq km, including 100 sq km of Shijiu Lake, comes from the district government's Hefeng Town page. The three statements rest on different things, registered boundaries, adjacency and town area including lake, and this site repeats them as they stand without substituting one for another.

Formation and change

The district government's geographical position page records that the divide between the Shijiu Lake and Qinhuai systems runs east to west across the middle of the district, that northern water flows to the Qinhuai and southern water to Shijiu Lake, and that Tianshengqiao Sluice is the north-south marker of the divide. The main channels entering the lake are the Xinqiao River, 26.28 km long, the Yunhe branch, 11.99 km, and the reach above Tianshengqiao Sluice, 6.3 km.

Name and date: none of the sources used records when the lake was formed or when it received its present name. Volume 1 of the Kangxi Gazetteer of Lishui County, in the "Annals of the County", notes that in the first year of the Yongle reign a barrier was built at Guangtong Town and refers to "the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake", which shows the name of the lake was already known at that time, but the entry does not record a date of formation. No date is therefore asserted here on the authority of the old gazetteer.

Reclamation and the return of land to the lake: the 2018 annual implementation plan for water pollution prevention records that the ecological safety survey of Shijiu Lake and the return of fishing grounds to the lake involved Honglan, Shiqiu, Hefeng, Baima and Jingqiao, whose names are repeated here as they stood at the time. That list is a division of work, not a list of the townships bordering the lake.

The water bodies on the register: the main data bulletin of Lishui's third national land survey, with a uniform reference date of 31 December 2019, records 9052.81 ha of lake surface, 2616.97 ha of reservoir surface and 33.65 ha of wetland, all of it inland mudflat. The bulletin's lake surface is the total for all lakes in the district and is not the area of Shijiu Lake alone.

Landscape and visiting

Wintering birds: the district government's natural resources page records that the swans flying down from the north each winter may reach ten thousand at most. That is a peak figure, not a year-in, year-out number.

Livelihood along the lake and the dancing ground: the district government's Folk Customs page records that people around Luoshan in Hefeng Town depend on Shijiu Lake for their living; the project page for Longwu (Luoshan Great Dragon) on the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network records that Luoshan Village adjoins the lake and that in the winter dry season the lakebed becomes the ground for the dragon dance, the season running normally from the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month to the eighteenth day of the first lunar month. The administrative divisions and place name of the village belong to the entry on Luoshan Village in the towns site, and the grade, batch and bearers of the great dragon to its entry in the culture site; this entry records only the lake's use as a dancing ground.

Protected status: in November 2019 the provincial forestry bureau approved the establishment of the Lishui Shijiu Lake Provincial Wetland Park with a planned area of 91.7 sq km; the following year the boundary markers and signs of the Lishui Shijiu Lake Provincial Important Wetland, the provincial wetland park, were sited and installed (Nanjing Municipal People's Government, 5 December 2023). The Jiangsu provincial list of important wetlands gives Shijiu Lake, Lishui District, as 9140.71 ha, between 118°52′25.1″ and 118°58′37.0″ east and between 31°25′27.9″ and 31°33′14.3″ north; the list carries no year of publication, so this site records only the status and the area. In September 2011 the Nanjing Municipal People's Government approved the regulations on the protection and management of ecological green space, whose schedule lists a Shijiu Lake scenic area at municipal level with an area of 93.6 sq km; what the schedule lists is a Municipal Scenic Area, and this site does not call it a provincial one.

Facilities around the lake: the Lishui District Water Bureau's reply of 2025 records that planting behind the embankment, a viewing platform on the water side, an overhang on the landward slope, footpaths and pocket parks have begun to form a belt of scenery around the lake, and that the protection and management area of Shijiu Lake includes the Shijiu Lake bridge. In October 2015 the Shijiu Lake bridge, 12617.2 m long, opened to traffic (Nanjing Municipal Water Bureau, 24 October 2025).

Navigation: on 29 December 2021 the Honglan lock and six bridges including the Maojiacun bridge, part of the Qinhuai River navigation improvement works between Shijiu Lake in Lishui and Pengfu in Jiangning, passed completion acceptance (Jiangsu Provincial Department of Transport, 7 January 2021); "Shijiu Lake in Lishui to Pengfu in Jiangning" is the name of a contract section and is repeated as it stands.

Water quality: the Lishui District Water Bureau's reply of 2025 records that the Shijiu Lake water function area is the Shijiu Lake Gaochun and Lishui fisheries and industrial water use area, with a target of Class III, and that monitoring data show the lake steadily meeting the target. The Class III in the information card is that target, not a monitored class at any one cross-section.

Visiting information: tickets, opening times, birdwatching points and transport change from season to season, and this site does not fix figures; before travelling, readers should go to the official notices of the district culture and tourism department, the local townships and the bodies that manage the lake. This entry was checked to September 2026.

Open questions

• Two figures for the lake area: 207.65 sq km (district government geographical position page, the value used here) and 214.7 sq km (Nanjing Municipal People's Government reply of 2023; Lishui District Water Bureau reply of 2025). Both are shown with their years, and this entry's confidence does not exceed medium.
• Three figures for the part within Lishui: 90.4 sq km (district government geographical position page), 91.2 sq km (Lishui District People's Government reply of 2023) and 87.7 sq km (Lishui District Water Bureau reply of 2025). All three are shown and none is chosen.
• Three figures for the shoreline: 70 km (Lishui District People's Government reply of 2023), 76 km (Nanjing Municipal Water Bureau, 2025) and 29.31 km within Lishui (reply of 2023). The first two do not say whether they cover the whole lake or only the part within Lishui; this site repeats them and does not distinguish on their behalf.
• The 599.39 sq km of the Shijiu Lake basin is a catchment area, not a lake area, and the two may not be used interchangeably.
• The 9052.81 ha of lake surface in the third national land survey bulletin is the district total; it is of a similar order to, but not the same as, the 90.4 sq km of Shijiu Lake within Lishui, and the two may not stand in for one another. The bulletin's uniform reference date is 31 December 2019, not the state of things in the year of publication, 2022.
• The Jiangsu provincial list of important wetlands carries no year of publication, so this site does not give a year of listing; the year 2020 in this entry rests on the municipal government's reply that the boundary markers and signs were sited and installed the following year, which is to say that the marker work was done that year, the reply giving no year of approval.
• No approval year has been found for the Shijiu Lake scenic area: the schedule to the 2011 municipal notice gives only the status, the level and the area, not the year of approval, and the "2011 list" in this entry refers to the year of that schedule, not to a year of approval.
• "Steadily meeting the water function area target" is a target, not a monitored class, and this site does not turn it into "the water is Class III".
• Hefeng Town's 198 sq km, including 100 sq km of Shijiu Lake, and the registered unit's "borders Hefeng Town to the east" are two different statements, the one a town area including lake, the other a registered boundary, and neither may stand in for the other.
• The return of fishing grounds to the lake involved five towns and subdistricts, Honglan, Shiqiu, Hefeng, Baima and Jingqiao. That is a division of work and not a list of the townships bordering the lake; the towns and subdistricts in this entry follow the registered boundaries and the district government's town pages, which are not the same as that list.
• The date of the formation of Shijiu Lake, the date of its naming and water-level data are not recorded in the sources used. The old gazetteers likewise record no date for its formation; the phrase "the waters of the Yanzhi River and Shijiu Lake" in the Kangxi gazetteer shows only that the name was already known at that time and is not enough to establish a date.
• The relation between the waters of Shijiu Lake and the surrounding administrative areas, the villages it spans and the names used for it in earlier periods, are not recorded beyond the three towns and subdistricts named above, which are not given down to village level; the administrative divisions and place names of the villages along the lake belong to the towns site and are not repeated here.