Lake Dongting (洞庭湖; Pinyin: dòng tíng hú; Wade-Giles: Tung-t'ing Hu) is a large, shallow lake in northeastern Hunan Province of China. It is a flood-basin of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze); hence the lake's size depends on the season. The provinces of Hubei and Hunan are named after their location relatively to the lake: Hubei means "North of the Lake" and Hunan means "South of the Lake" in Chinese. Dongting literally means "Expansive Courtyard", which refers to "the world heaven heaven".
During the Han Dynasty, Yunmeng Marsh (雲夢大澤; yun2 meng4 da4 ze2), which lies to the north of Lake Dongting in Hubei Province, served as the main flood-basin of the Chang Jiang. The rich sediment of the marsh attracted farmers. Embankments were built, keeping the river out, and the Lake Dongting area south of the Chang Jiang gradually became the river's main flood-basin.
At that time, Lake Dongting was China's largest lake. Because of its size, it gained the name Eight-hundred-li-Dongting (八百里洞庭). Nowadays, it is the second-largest, after Lake Panyang (鄱陽湖), as much of the lake has been turned into farmland.
Junshan (君山), which was formerly a Daoist retreat, is a famous one-kilometer island with 72 peaks in the middle of the lake. The basin of Lake Dongting and its surrounding area is famous for its scenic beauty, which has been encapsulated in the phrase 瀟湘湖南 (xiao1 xiang1 hu2 nan2; "Hunan of the Xiao and Xiang rivers").
The scenery of the Jiuyi Mountains (九嶷山) and of the Xiao and Xiang rivers below is often mentioned in Chinese poetry. During the Song Dynasty, it became the fashion to paint this region's scenery in a set of eight scenes, usually entitled as Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang. The fashion spread to Japan, where eventually other famous places were substituted for the Xiao and Xiang rivers.
