Xinglong Lake
Restored urban lake with wetland shallows, walking paths, and a decade-long ecological cleanup success story.
This guide to Xinglong Lake in Chengdu follows an artificial lake dug in under a year in 2013 as the showpiece of a science district thick with software firms and venues built for the 2025 World Games, and how it collapsed into some of the worst water quality on China's official scale within a few years. It traces the eleven-year effort that followed: buried drainage pipe, intercepted sewage outfalls, dredged mud and replanted shallows, with the lake closed to the public through the repair. Photos from the polluted years show a lake the color of weak tea, ringed by glass towers and almost no birds.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.