Lake Dōngpíng

Lake Dōngpíng spreads across western Shandong, just south of the lower Yellow River. Its broad, shallow basin covers about 148 square kilometres, with an average depth of only 1.59 metres and a storage capacity of roughly 235 million cubic metres. The open water, marshy margins and surrounding lowland form a freshwater landscape that has long depended on the balance between the Yellow River and local drainage.

It is also the only remaining stretch of water linked to the vast Eight Hundred Li Liangshan Lake described in the classical novel Water Margin. That literary connection gives the later basin a memorable cultural identity, although the present lake is far smaller than the marshland of the story.