The Dongping Lake () is a freshwater lake in

Shandong Province Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizatio ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. It is situated in

Dongping County , other_name = , nickname = , settlement_type = , total_type = , motto = , image_skyline = BaifoShan Park.jpg , imagesize = , image_caption = , image_ ...

in the west of

, south of the lower reaches of

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...

. The lake has a total area of about 148 square kilometers. The average depth is 1.59 m, the water storage capacity is about 2.35×10⁸m³. The Dongping Lake is the second largest fresh-water lake in Shandong Province; it is the only extant water area of the Eight Hundred Li Liangshan Lake () described in the famous medieval novel, ''

Water Margin ''Water Margin'' (''Shuihu zhuan'') is one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, and is attributed to Shi Nai'an. It is also translated as ''Outlaws of the Marsh'' and ''All Men Are Brothers''. The story, which is ...

'', one of the

Four Great Classical Novels Classic Chinese Novels () are the best-known novels of pre-modern Chinese literature. These are among the world's longest and oldest novels. They represented a new complexity in structure and sophistication in language that helped to establish t ...

of Chinese literature. The Dongping Lake will be used as a reservoir on the Eastern Route of China's

South–North Water Transfer Project The South–North Water Transfer Project, also translated as the South-to-North Water Diversion Project () is a multi-decade infrastructure mega-project in China. Ultimately it aims to channel 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually fr ...

. (The

Yangtze River The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...

route, mostly piggybacking on, or paralleling, the

Grand Canal of China The Grand Canal, known to the Chinese as the Jing–Hang Grand Canal (, or more commonly, as the「大运河」("Grand Canal")), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the longest canal or artificial river in the world. Starting in Beijing, it passes ...

.The map at the
Eastern Route Project (ERP)
" page, on the official project site.) As the water transfer system entered its testing stage in the summer of 2013, the area's fish farmers started complaining that the polluted Yangtze River water entering the Dongping Lake is killing their fish.Chinese Water Diversion Project Kills Fish on Test Run
2013-07-08

Notes

{{Lakes of China Lakes of China Bodies of water of Shandong