The Most Beautiful Lakes in the People's Republic of China
8 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in the People's Republic of China are Yamdrok Lake, West Lake and Namtso. The list covers 8 lakes. Last updated 14 October 2026.
China's lakes range from sacred waters on the roof of the world to a lake that shaped a whole tradition of landscape art. On the Tibetan Plateau, the rise of the Himalayas left high basins where lakes lie above 4,000 metres under thin, clear air. In Xinjiang, mountain lakes are fed by the snows of the Tian Shan and Altai, while in the desert of Gansu a spring has kept a small lake alive among the dunes.
Yamdrok Lake, one of the three holy lakes of Tibet, curves between bare ridges in a deep turquoise. Namtso lies at about 4,700 metres beneath the Nyenchen Tanglha range, and Lake Manasarovar, at the foot of Mount Kailash, is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bon, many of whom walk around it as a pilgrimage.
West Lake in Hangzhou is very different: a lake shaped over centuries by people, with the Su and Bai causeways, pagodas and temples that poets and painters returned to again and again. It is listed by UNESCO as a cultural landscape. Crescent Lake near Dunhuang is a small, crescent-shaped oasis surrounded by high dunes, Sayram Lake is a large alpine lake in the Tian Shan, and Kanas Lake in the Altai changes colour with the seasons and the light.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yamdrok Lake | Lake | |
| 2 | West Lake | Lake | ✓ |
| 3 | Namtso | Lake | |
| 4 | Karakul Lake | Lake | |
| 5 | Lake Manasarovar | Lake | |
| 6 | Crescent Lake | Oasis | |
| 7 | Sayram Lake | Lake | |
| 8 | Kanas Lake | Lake |
01 Yamdrok Lake
People's Republic of China28.978° N 90.746° E
Bolun Yan bolun · CC0 The lake also has a modern chapter: a hydropower station near the village of Baidi, planned in the 1980s and finished in the 1990s, draws on its water. Tibetan opposition to using a holy lake this way halted construction for a time, and critics warned that it would lower the water level. For a visitor, though, what remains is the sweep of colour and silence from the pass, and the lonely shoreline road that follows its arms.
Did you know? Samding Monastery, founded in the 13th century, takes its name from the Temple of Soaring Meditation and sits about 90 metres above the water.
02 West Lake
People's Republic of China · 3.1 km from Hangzhou30.238° N 120.141° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Vined from Pixabay The lake is often summed up as one hill, two pagodas, three islets and four causeways. The hill is Gushan, the only natural island, joined to the shore by the Bai Causeway. The pagodas are the slender Baochu Pagoda on the northern hills and the Leifeng Pagoda on the southern shore, linked to the legend of the White Snake and rebuilt in 2002 after the original fell in 1924. On the artificial islet of Lesser Yingzhou, small stone pagodas rise from the water and are lit at the Mid-Autumn Festival to create the scene called Three Pools Mirroring the Moon. Local wit adds the "Three Oddities": the Broken Bridge is not broken, the Solitary Island is not solitary, and the Long Bridge is not long.
Did you know? Su Shi was the first to use the name West Lake in an official document, his 1090 petition to the court to dredge it.
03 Namtso
People's Republic of China30.721° N 90.468° E
Image by weiconggao0 from Pixabay What lingers after a visit is the scale: a lake you cannot see across, set at an altitude where the air is thin, the light hard and clear, and the silence broken only by wind and prayer flags. The climate is alpine - frigid, very dry winters and cool, rainy summers - so the lake shows a different face in every season.
Did you know? Each winter the lake freezes over, and the ice may not fully melt until around mid-June.
04 Karakul Lake
People's Republic of China38.446° N 75.054° E
Jialiang Gao , www.peace-on-earth.org · CC BY-SA 3.0 Akto County, where the lake lies, occupies China's westernmost corner and borders Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan; its name means "white mountain" in Kyrgyz.
Did you know? Sven Hedin tried and failed to climb Muztagh Ata in 1894; a joint Chinese–Soviet party finally reached the summit in 1956.
05 Lake Manasarovar
People's Republic of China30.667° N 81.500° E
Jean-Marie Hullot · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tibetan records show the area was already treated as sacred ground by the late 12th century. Pilgrims bathe in the lake and walk the 53 km kora around Kailash — clockwise for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, anticlockwise for Bon followers. Small monasteries, stupas and lines of prayer flags stand along the shore, among them Chiu Gompa; many religious buildings in the region were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976. Pilgrimage from India was interrupted after 1962 and resumed in 1981.
Did you know? In the Ramayana the sage Vishvamitra tells Rama that the Sarayu, the river flowing past Ayodhya, was born from this lake.
06 Crescent Lake
People's Republic of China · 6.3 km from Dunhuang40.087° N 94.669° E
Image by nhluoj from Pixabay That supply nearly failed. A reservoir built upstream on the Dang River in 1975 cut groundwater recharge so severely that by the late 1990s the lake had shrunk to under a meter deep and just 0.17 hectares — a puddle compared to its historic size. A state-funded recovery plan starting in 2011, built around twelve permeable dams designed to let water seep back into the aquifer rather than just flow past it, reversed the decline; by 2025 the lake had reached a two-decade high of 3.8 meters deep and 2.12 hectares. It's an unusual case of an 'ancient wonder' being healthiest not in some untouched past, but right now, because of deliberate engineering.
Did you know? It has traditionally been counted among the Eight Views of Dunhuang, the town's canon of famous sights.
07 Sayram Lake
People's Republic of China44.598° N 81.165° E
lwtt93 from Shanghai, China · CC BY 2.0 The lake was born of glacial cirques and originally held no fish at all. Since the 1990s some sixteen species, among them peled and Arctic cisco, have been introduced and have settled. On the shores, steppe animals such as the corsac fox and the bobak marmot live alongside whooper swans, mallards and other waterbirds of the lakeside wetlands. A road about 79 kilometres long circles the whole lake.
Did you know? It reaches about 110 metres at its deepest, averages around 56 metres, and holds some 26 billion cubic metres of water.
08 Kanas Lake
People's Republic of China48.815° N 87.040° E
Newbamboo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The pavilion's name points to the lake's other fame. For centuries there have been reports of huge creatures in its depths; one explanation offered by scientists is very large taimen, a giant salmon-like fish of Siberian rivers. Around the lake live Tuvan and Kazakh communities, and the Tuvan villages of log houses inside the reserve are as much part of the picture as the water. The area is a national nature reserve and appears on China's tentative list for World Heritage.
Did you know? In 1985 a Xinjiang University team led by Yuan Guoying reported giant fish in the lake, estimating some at 10 to 15 metres long.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful lakes in the People's Republic of China?
- On our list, Yamdrok Lake ranks first, followed by West Lake and Namtso.
- Why is Lake Manasarovar sacred?
- Lake Manasarovar lies near Mount Kailash in Tibet and is sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bon. Pilgrims bathe in it or walk around its shore, often as part of a journey to Kailash.
- What is West Lake in Hangzhou famous for?
- West Lake is famous for its causeways, islands, pagodas and gardens, created and celebrated over more than a thousand years. Its scenery influenced garden design in China, Japan and Korea, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- How high is Namtso?
- Namtso lies at about 4,700 metres above sea level on the Tibetan Plateau and is one of the largest salt lakes in the region.
- How many lakes are on this list in the People's Republic of China?
- The list covers 8 lakes.