Xuan Huong Lake

Still water. A ring of green trees along the bank. Far off, the rooftops and streets of the town center. This is one of the most familiar views of Da Lat, and it belongs to Xuân Hương Lake. Many people take it for a natural lake. It is not.

Before there was a lake, this was only a low valley with the Cam Ly stream running through it. In the early twentieth century, the French were building Da Lat into a resort town. They decided to turn the valley into a sheet of water. According to the Lâm Đồng newspaper, in 1919 the French resident Cunhac proposed the idea. Labbe, an engineer in the public works service, dammed the stream to make the lake. Four years later, in 1923, a second dam was built farther down. That gave the town two lakes, side by side.

Then, in March 1932, a great storm broke both dams. The lake vanished. Da Lat lost the heart of its landscape. Only in 1934 and 1935 did a Vietnamese engineer named Trần Đăng Khoa design and build a large stone dam, far stronger than before. It stood in front of the Quản Đạo Residence, and people were used to calling the place Cầu Ông Đạo. That name is still used today.

For several decades the lake carried the name Grand Lac. It is French, and it means Big Lake. In 1953, Mr. Nguyễn Vỹ, who was then chairman of the Da Lat town council, proposed changing it to Xuân Hương Lake. The new name recalls Hồ Xuân Hương, one of the most famous poets in the history of Vietnamese literature. She was a Vietnamese poet of the late 1700s and early 1800s. From then on, this lake has carried the name of a gifted woman.

In 1988, the Ministry of Culture ranked Xuân Hương Lake as a national scenic site. In 1997, the area to be protected around it was set at 96.1 hectares.

Today, walking around the lake is one of the simplest and most characteristic ways to know Da Lat. People commonly describe its shape as a crescent moon. The shore runs about 5 kilometers, and the water covers about 25 hectares. Along the bank you can watch the surface change color with the clouds and the light. Early morning brings mist. Afternoon brings a blaze of sun. At night, the street lamps shine down and shimmer on the water.

Around the lake stand places tied to the memory of the city. The Da Lat flower garden lies to the north, and Đồi Cù hill is right beside it. On the other side of the water is Lâm Viên Square, which covers more than 72,000 square meters and is where the lake meets the life of the modern city.

Xuân Hương Lake is an artificial lake. Human hands made it, a storm broke it, people built it again, and it was named for a gifted woman poet. Its story is the story of a whole city that knows how to hold on to the beauty it made.

So when morning clouds change the color of the water, or the street lamps shimmer on it at night, this artificial lake looks as beautiful as any natural lake in the world.