Dian Lake

Dianchi Lake (Chinese: 滇池, Diānchí), also known as Lake Dian and Kunming Lake (昆明湖, Kūnmínghú), is a large lake located on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau close to Kunming, Yunnan, in southern China. Its nickname is the "Sparkling Pearl Embedded in a Highland" and it was the model for the Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace in Beijing. Its name is the source of Yunnan's Chinese abbreviation 滇.

It is a freshwater fault lake at 1,886.5 m (6,189 ft) above sea level. The lake covers 298 km² (115 sq mi). It is 39 km (24 mi) long from north to south, and the average depth is 4.4 m (14 ft). It is the eighth largest lake in China and the largest in Yunnan Province.

History

The Chinese character for the lake is a phonosemantic compound of the radical 氵 ("water") and the character 真, whose current pronunciation is zhēn but whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *tin.

Dianchi Lake was the site of the capital of the independent kingdom of the Cuan (爨) during the first millennium AD. At that time, it was known as Kunchuan (昆川).