Lake Chágàn

Chagan Lake lies in the Songnen plain, in the country of the Gorlos Mongols. Its Mongolian name, Chagan Nuur, means White Lake, and local traditions also give its waters a sacred character. Fishing connected the lake's seasonal resources with the life of communities around its shores. Winter ice provided the setting for a distinctive fishing tradition in which the opening of the season was accompanied by offerings to the lake and the ceremonial awakening of the nets.

These rites joined the work of fishermen to Mongolian practices of honouring heaven, mountains and water. The lake's religious landscape acquired another institution in the Qing period. In 1755 the reincarnate lama Yundanzhamsu of the Gorlos Front Banner founded Miaoyin Temple beside the lake to honour the Qianlong emperor's birthday. The temple received an imperial plaque in Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan and Chinese. Its foundation placed Tibetan Buddhist patronage alongside older lake-centred observances. Through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the shores thus belonged to a regional world in which fisheries, Mongolian community traditions and Qing Buddhist institutions met around the same body of water.