East Lake (Wuhan)
East Lake (Chinese: 东湖; pinyin: Dōng Hú) is a large lake within the city limits of Wuhan, China, and the largest urban lake in China. Wuhan's East Lake covers an area of 88 square kilometers (33 square kilometers of water area). It is one of the 5A tourist zones of China, and admits over a million people yearly. It is one of the largest sites in Huazhong District. It is also the largest "City Lake" in China. East Lake is made of four areas, Ting Tao, Mo Shan, Luo Yan Island and Museum of Hubei Province.
One end of Mo Shan features a Daoist temple built over the putative site of where one of the characters in "Romance of Three Kingdoms" performed special Qi Men Dun Jia rites before the famous battle of Red Cliffs. No one knows precisely the actual location, but the Mo Shan site was an archeological dig in the early part of the twentieth century.
Environmental issues
The lake was cut off from the Yangtze River in 1957. Water quality has deteriorated since because of 180,000 tons discharge of wastewater (domestic sewage and industrial) into the lake per day. Each year, about 441 tons of nitrogen and 40 tons of phosphorus are flow into the lake. Most parts of the lake have been assessed as eutrophicated, unsuitable for drinking and many recreational purposes.
