东山湖公园

This guide to Dongshan Lake Park in Guangzhou tells how, starting in 1958, more than 1.7 million residents dug this lake by hand out of a stagnant swamp, moving over a million cubic meters of mud one basket at a time to fix the city's flooding. It follows the lake's 1959 opening and the peninsulas and named bridges built around it, on the way to earning a place among the city's eight great historic views. Stand at the water's edge and picture the shovels beneath today's calm surface.