Yueyaquan () is a crescent-shaped

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in an

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment Dunhuang Dunhuang () is a county-level city in northwestern Gansu Province, Western China. According to the 2010 Chinese census, the city has a population of 186,027, though 2019 estimates put the city's population at about 191,800. Sachu (Dunhuang) was ...

Gansu Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...

Province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

History

The lake was named Yueyaquan in the

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. Mildred Cable and Francesca French visited the lake during their travels in the region in 1932 and recorded their impressions in their book ''The Gobi Desert'': "All around us we saw tier on tier of lofty sand-hills, giving the lie to our quest, yet when, with a final desperate effort, we hoisted ourselves over the last ridge and looked down on what lay beyond, we saw the lake below, and its beauty was entrancing." According to measurements made in 1960, the average depth of the lake was , with a maximum depth of . In the following 40 years, the depth of the lake declined by more than . In the early 1990s, it had shrunk to an average depth of one meter. In 2006, the local government with help of the central government started to fill the lake and restore its depth; its depth and size have been growing yearly since then. Proposed groundwater diversions are modeled to raise the water table and level of the lake.

Tourism

The lake and the surrounding deserts are very popular with tourists, who are sand sledding, offered camel tours, all-terrain vehicle rides, helicopter tours and motor glides. Crescent Lake got part of the

Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark (), officially Dunhuang UNESCO National Geopark (China), is a 2015 approved UNESCO national geopark in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China, that shows the Yardang geological feature of the area. Fully certified, the ...

which was recognized 2015 by UNESCO.

References

External links

Tourists Information
(Japanese / English / Korean) {{Lakes of China Dunhuang Bodies of water of Gansu Lakes of China Oases of China