Black Dragon Cafe

Being just about an hours drive from Kunming, Fuxian Lake has become a weekend getaway for the moneyed of Kunming, who roll up in their Santanas and SUVs for a weekend of swimming, beach barbecues, and all night cards or mahjong. The place has a real family feel about it though, not the usual seedy karaoke bars that you see in Chinese tourist spots.

The decidedly dilapidated mud-house fishing village (in contrast to the shiny tourist buildings of Luchong [禄充]) is worth a walk around.

Of Yunnan’s nine great lakes Fuxian is one (of only two) that is not polluted, it’s crystal clear and even big fish can be seen from the bank. Banyan trees line the lake, some of which judging by their size must be centuries old, and there are cactuses so ancient they have become trees.

The exploration of an underwater town, first discovered in 1992, was given official backing and a full-scale investigation this June.

Local amateur diver Geng Wei discovered the town in Fuxian Lake (in Chengjiang county , Yuxi prefecture , 60 kilometres from Kunming), a lake formed by a geological fault and covering 216.6 square kilometres. In June 2006 the China Underwater Archaeology Team made its first exploration, and confirmed the discovery of the mysterious city. Among the finds so far recovered are stone slabs embellished with carvings and ceramic cauldrons.

Story translated from Xinhua [Chinese]. It appeared on 17 June. Later this China Radio International story [English] added a lot more detail.

That venture was broadcast live by China Central Television (CCTV ), and divers found a stone wall and a shard of pottery.

The shard was later proved to date back to the Han Dynasty (BC 206BC-AD220), leading local archaeologists to believe the underwater relics were at least 1,800 years old. Some of them even assumed that what was actually beneath the water was Yuyuan, an ancient city that disappeared mysteriously from historical documents.

Old books have shown that there was once a city called Yuyuan to the north of Fuxian Lake, which was never mentioned after the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-581AD)…

[The finding of sun patterns on the rock, instead of Chinese characters, mean] the age of the relics could be about 4,000 years old. [The article later notes that Yunnan was not until recently a Han Chinese area].

But, the scientist was still puzzled by his own conclusion, as “there is little possibility that people 4,000 years ago could build such large stone constructions.”

The underwater building relics, as sonar detected, scatter in an area of 2.4 square kilometres, more than double the size of the city of Pompeii…