Xuanwu Lake is located in Xuanwu District, Nanjing City, with Zijin Mountain in the east, Ming City Wall in the west, Nanjing Station in the north, and Fuzhou Mountain in the south. , known as the “Pearl of Jinling”, also known as Houhu and Beihu.

The humanistic history of Xuanwu Lake can be traced back to the pre-Qin period; during the Six Dynasties, it became a place for emperors to exercise and inspect their sailors, and was turned into a royal garden. On the south bank, there were royal palaces such as Hualin Garden and Leyou Garden.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi, Yin Wang of Jiangning Prefecture “returned the abandoned lake to the fields”, and Xuanwu Lake disappeared for more than 200 years; in the Yuan Dynasty, after two dredgings, Xuanwu Lake reappeared; Forbidden place; when the Nanyang Encouragement Association was held in the late Qing Dynasty, Fengrun Gate (now Xuanwu Gate) was opened, and Xuanwu Lake became a tourist area; in August of the 17th year of the Republic of China (1928), Xuanwu Lake was officially opened to the public as a park.

Xuanwu Lake is diamond-shaped, with a total area of ​​5.13 square kilometers and a lake area of ​​3.78 square kilometers. The lake is divided into three parts by five continents (Huanzhou, Yingzhou, Lingzhou, Liangzhou, Cuizhou). Northwest Lake), Southeast Lake and Southwest Lake, the North Lake is relatively shallow, the Southwest Lake is the deepest, and the Southeast Lake is next. The lakes are connected by embankments, bridges and roads.

Xuanwu Lake is a shallow lake, and its water source comes from the northern foot of Zijin Mountain. There are 7 main canals entering the lake, which are connected with the moat, Jinchuan River, and Pearl River. Comprehensive functions such as hydration.

In February 2005, Xuanwu Lake was listed as a national AAAA-level tourist attraction; in September 2008, Xuanwu Lake Park was listed as a national key park; in September 2016, Xuanwu Lake was listed as a national water conservancy scenic spot; in October 2019 In September, Xuanwu Lake won the title of “Top Ten Leisure Lakes in China in 2019”.

History

The surrounding area of ​​ancient Xuanwu Lake was the earliest place suitable for human habitation in Nanjing. As early as about 6,500 to 4,000 years ago, Xuanwu Lake was connected with the life of Nanjing people.

In 210 BC, it is said that Qin Shihuang returned from his fifth tour. When he arrived in Jinling, several aura-watching magicians who accompanied him saw the steep mountains and dangerous terrain around Jinling, so they said to Qin Shihuang: Jinling has the spirit of the emperor. Qin Shihuang was very displeased when he heard that, so he ordered people to excavate Fangshan, let the Huai River flow through Jinling, vent the king’s spirit, and change Jinling to Moling, and the lake at this time was renamed Moling Lake.

At the end of Jian’an in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhuge Liang’s envoy Jiangdong passed by Nanjing, and he made a Fengshui evaluation of “Zhongshan is a dragon, a stone is a tiger, this is the emperor’s house.” Become a water army training place.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, Jiang Ziwen, the captain of Yinmoling, was buried by the lake.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Quan, the great emperor of Wu, changed his name to “Jiangling Lake” in order to avoid the name taboo of his grandfather and grandson Zhong, and diverted water into the back lake of the palace garden. “.

From the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Southern Dynasties, Xuanwu Lake had successively had names such as Kunming Lake, Yinmatang, Lianhu Lake, Xiwu Lake, and Lianwu Lake. Xuanwu Lake entered the first heyday in history.

During the Six Dynasties, Xuanwu Lake was a recreational place for feudal emperors. Out of the need of the “Four Gods Layout” of the imperial capital, and because “Black Dragon” appeared twice in the lake in the 25th year of Liu Song Yuanjia (448), it is also called Xuanwu Lake.

In the third year of Song Daming Dynasty, Shanglin Garden was set up on the lake, and Leyou Garden and Hualin Garden were also set up on the south bank. During the next year of Qi Dynasty, Emperor Wu often went out hunting in the middle of the night, either to Zhongshan or Mufushan, accompanied by tens of thousands of court ladies in strict costumes. When he came back at dawn, he just heard the rooster crowing, “The jade leak in Xuanwu Lake reminds me, the rooster crows and the embroidered jacket returns to the mouth. “The sentence originated from this, and there is still the place name of Jimingdai near Wumiao Gate.

In the early years of Liu Song and Yuan Jia, Emperor Wen of the Song Dynasty carried out a large-scale dredging of Xuanwu Lake. The lake mud dug out was piled up and formed a small island out of the water. The largest of them are the three islands of “Penglai”, “Fangzhang” and “Yingzhou”, collectively known as “Three God Mountains”, which are the predecessors of Liangzhou, Huanzhou and Yingzhou in today’s Xuanwu Lake.

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Nanjing was no longer the capital, and Xuanwu Lake was neglected. When Yan Zhenqing, a great calligrapher, was appointed governor of Shengzhou, he once changed Xuanwu Lake into a “free life pool”. Many famous poets, such as Li Bai, Du Mu, Wei Zhuang, Li Shangyin, etc., expressed emotion in the face of the vicissitudes of Xuanwu Lake’s status.

During the Southern Tang Dynasty, Xuanwu Lake was revived for a time, so that Feng Mi, the minister of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was greedy for the “famous scenery and picturesque scenery” in the lake, and asked the emperor to give him the lake as a private garden. This matter was rejected by Xu Xuan. Stop it.

In the eighth year of Xining in the Northern Song Dynasty (1075), Wang Anshi, Yin Wang of Jiangning Prefecture, put forward the idea of ​​”returning the lake to the field”, and played the role of Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty to release the lake to get the field. As a result, Xuanwu Lake disappeared for more than 200 years, which seriously affected the city of Nanjing. of drainage.

Xuanwu Lake reappeared only after two dredgings in the fifth year of Dade (1301) of the Yuan Dynasty and the third year of Zhizheng (1343) of the Yuan Dynasty.

In the second year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1369), after Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang established his capital in Nanjing, he expanded the scope of Nanjing City. From then on, Xuanwu Lake became the moat outside the city wall in the northeast of Nanjing City in Ming Dynasty. An insurmountable barrier has been added between Xuanwu Lake and the main urban area, as well as Fuzhou Mountain and Jilong Mountain, which has completely changed the visual landscape of the northern part of Nanjing since the Six Dynasties. The water surface of Xuanwu Lake further shrunk, and the lake surface was only one-third of that of the Six Dynasties period.

At the same time, a Taiping Gate was built at the junction of Zijin Mountain and Xuanwu Lake, and a “Taiping Embankment” (now a section of Longpan Road) was built outside Taiping Gate, and the lake surface of Xuanwu Lake close to the west foot of Zhongshan Mountain was separated into “Middle Lake” ( The remains of the “Zhonghu Lake” are still preserved in Baima Park), thus completely dividing the original continuous area of ​​Zhongshan-Xuanwu Lake into two places, changing the landscape pattern of this area for tens of millions of years.

In the 14th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1381), Zhu Yuanzhang selected Xuanwu Lake as the storage place for the central government of the Ming Dynasty to store the national household registration tax collection and the yellow book of the farm file, and built the Houhu Yellow Book Library (equivalent to today’s Central Archives). , prohibiting the public from entering. Since then, Xuanwu Lake has been isolated from the outside world for more than 260 years.

During the Qing Dynasty, Xuanwu Lake was changed to Yuanwu Lake to avoid the name taboo of Emperor Kangxi Xuanye. Both Kangxi and Qianlong traveled here during their southern tours and left poems. After Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, Yuanwu Lake had some garden buildings. Zeng Guofan, the governor of Liangjiang, rebuilt the lake temple in Liangzhou, and added the Huxin Pavilion, Daxian Tower, Guanyin Pavilion, and Lotus Appreciation Hall. Zuo Zongtang, a minister of the late Qing Dynasty, also built a long embankment connecting Guqigeng and Liangzhou, which solved the inconvenient situation of “you must go out from Taiping Gate and travel by boat” when you visit Yuanwu Lake.

After the 20th year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1840), as the westerly wind spread to the east, modern “parks” open to the public appeared in China, and the concept of public welfare “gardens” entered China, prompting the closed and exclusive royal gardens and private gardens in the past. Gardens, etc. are transformed into parks.

In the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1908), Duan Fang, the governor of Liangjiang and the Minister of Nanyang Commerce at the time, was ordered to hold the Nanyang Quanye Fair, and opened the lake as “Wuzhou Park” to the outside world. A city gate was opened on the city wall of the meeting place. The project was not yet completed, Duan Fang was transferred away, and the successor Governor Zhang Renjun was in charge the next year. Because Zhang Renjun was originally from Fengrun, Hebei, it was named “Fengrunmen”.

The opening of Fengrun Gate (now Xuanwu Gate) is a turning point for Xuanwu Lake, marking that Xuanwu Lake has officially become a park in the sense of modern history. Later, Cuihong dikes were successively built to connect to the lake, and Xuanwu Lake became a famous tourist area in Nanjing.