In
China’s southwest province Guizhou,
there is Dragon Palace Town (龙宫寨);
around the township, there is Revolving Lake
Village (漩塘寨);
outside the village, there is Revolving Lake;
in the lake, the entire body of water keeps
revolving clockwise. Sometimes it rotates in
a slow motion, drawing a circle in an hour;
in other times it spins pretty fast, with
just a few minutes to complete a turn.
The
lake measures 101 metres in diameter, as for
its depth, nobody knows exactly. There were
several survey attempts made, but so far no
clear result has been produced.
The
locals view it as a tunnel linking to other
worlds, and believe a magic bottle gourd was
thrown in the heart of the lake, which sucks
the water and causes it to spin. Some brave
villagers would sail a boat to the middle in
the hope to catch the gourd with their
fishing rods. But they only caught fish, with
some weighted a massive 30 kilos. In the
reflection of the sun, they sometimes spotted
creatures in the size of a house swimming in
groups. And they also found seaweeds, which,
according to some experts, stands as a
testament to the theory that the Guizhou was
part of the ocean about three hundred million
years ago.
Most
villagers prefer not to go anywhere near the
water nevertheless. They hold the lake in
fear and awe, and regard it as guardian
spirit. Every family in the village has a
special place for the lake god in a water
facing room, and they have built a temple by
a hill foot near the shore.
In
late June this year, a group of scientists
launched an investigation into the cause of
the water rotation. They did not find
anything unusual with its magnetic field, but
discovered a river to north of the lake in
the shadow of a thick and lush bamboo grove,
which pours its water into the lake. The
river is five-metre wide and a bit more than
seven-metre deep with a total length reaching
more than two thousand metres long, allowing
250,000 tons of water influx per day. That’s
an awful lot of water. Then why does the lake
never flood? Or is there indeed a magic
bottle gourd over there channelling the water
to another world?
Soon
they found the answer. About 3 kilometre east
of the lake, they detected a group of streams
including both open and hidden waterways.
Further study confirms that there is indeed a
gigantic hole in the middle of the lake,
acting like a funnel that draws the water
from the river in the north and releases it
to the waterways in the east. And that
sucking force is the cause for the water in
the lake to revolving clockwise.
This
rather unusual natural phenomenon is said to
have something to do with the Karst landform.
Karst
landform is a landscape featuring cliffs with
many caves and lakes that have no open inlet
or outlet, which can typically be found in
limestone areas where rocks are easily
dissolved by the springs or waterfalls.
Covering 15 percent of Earth land surface,
Karst landforms are mainly concentrated in
three regions, and the Revolving Lake that
sits on the east slope of the lifted fault
platform of Yunnan-Guizhou is right in the
centre of one of the three such regions.
As the
only known waterway in the world that has the
entire body of the water constantly
revolving, the lake has now become a
sightseeing attraction, and the local
government is said to work on a plan to
establish a scenic area called the Dragon
Palace.
