Bao Linh Lake

Palm groves, grassland, tea gardens and the green patches of the Định Hóa countryside surround a wide, still lake. Look out and there is calm water. Look back and there are wooded mountains. This is Bảo Linh Lake in Thái Nguyên, and its beauty comes from the land itself, not from advertising.

The water covers about 81 to 82 hectares, depending on the source, and its average depth is nearly 18 meters. A Thái Nguyên newspaper describes it as the second largest artificial lake in the province, after Núi Cốc Lake.

Few people know the story behind this water.

In October 1988, an irrigation project began in the Bảo Linh area. A dam was built to hold back the Chu River, creating a lake that would water the fields of many communes downstream in Định Hóa. By the end of 1989 or the start of 1990, the dam began to fill.

Before the basin filled, 75 households in the flooded zone moved to new homes for the sake of the project. The newspaper reports this, drawing on the Party committee history of the Bảo Linh commune. It is an important memory for the community. The quiet lake today lies over ground where people once lived, with houses, fields and gardens. Knowing that changes how the water looks.

So Bảo Linh Lake is more than a place to look at scenery. It is an irrigation work that plays a real part in farming life downstream. It also holds the memory of a community that gave up its land so that a wider region could have water for its fields.

A tourism website describes the uneven slabs of stone along the edge of the dam as "the Ghềnh Đá Đĩa of Thái Nguyên". That is the website's comparison, meant to give a picture. It is not an official geological name confirmed by any specialist source. The scene itself is real: slabs of stone beside green water.

The same newspaper adds that in 2014, local people tried raising fish in cages on the lake and set up a cooperative for fish farming. That shows the lake is not only a landscape. It is also a livelihood for the people around it, to this day.

The lake also has a special place in tourism around Định Hóa. In 2015, the provincial government of Thái Nguyên placed the lake in a linked tourism area. The area also takes in the Chùa Hang pagoda and the Chợ Chu prison. The website of Định Hóa commune also sees potential here. It says that the Chùa Hang pagoda and Bảo Linh Lake could form a chain of historical, ecological and cultural tourism. So the lake does not stand alone. It can be one stop on a trip to the Định Hóa safe zone, one of the important resistance areas of the whole country.

Bảo Linh Lake is a place worth stopping. It is a place to stand before that still water and understand that behind every beautiful lake are people who gave up their land and their homes. They did it so that the water could come and feed the fields of a whole region.