Chenghai Lake 程海

About Chenghai Lake

At Jinsha Lishui, the lake-replenishment outlet provides a specific viewing stop where incoming water meets the lakeside landscape. The southern shore adds a cultural counterpart: Maojiawan’s Border Settlement Culture Museum and ancestral hall explain the communities around the lake. Choose one lakeside viewpoint and one village cultural stop rather than assuming the whole shore is open for unrestricted exploration.

Chenghai formed in the early Pleistocene as an outlet lake, draining through the Haikou River (海口河), historically called the Cheng River (程河), into the Jinsha River. After the middle Ming dynasty the water level fell, the Haikou River dried up, and the lake stopped draining outward, becoming a closed lake that has since turned brackish. In 1993 a diversion tunnel was built to bring water from the Xianren River (仙人河) into the lake to ease the decline in water level.

Chenghai is a tectonic fault lake (构造断陷湖泊) at an elevation of 1,501 or 1,503 meters, with a surface area of 74.6 square kilometers. Its catchment covers 228.9 square kilometers and is fed mainly by surface runoff and rainfall on the lake, since the rivers flowing into it are seasonal. It is one of Yunnan's nine plateau lakes (云南省九大高原湖泊) and is noted for growing natural Spirulina (天然螺旋藻).

What to look for

• Jinsha Lishui combines the replenishment outlet with lake and wetland views.
• Reeds and the surrounding slopes create a different scene from the denser resort shores elsewhere in Yunnan.

Location & getting there

Getting to Chenghai Lake

For a defined first stop, arrange a road transfer to Jinsha Lishui at Chenghai’s replenishment outlet in Yongsheng. The county’s visitor route also identifies Maojiawan on the southern shore for the museum and ancestral hall.