An 1,800-Year-Old City Lies Beneath Thousand Island Lake

West of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, there is Thousand Island Lake, an artificial reservoir. Beneath the lake lies a sunken city.

The city is called Shicheng, said to have been built during the Eastern Han Dynasty, around AD 208, standing for over 1,700 years. Inside were city walls, gates, government offices, residences, and several hundred stone archways, some inscribed with characters, standing at street corners.

In 1959, the state built the Xin'anjiang Hydropower Station. When the dam closed, the water rose, the lake level climbed higher and higher, and everyone in the city moved away—nearly 300,000 people relocated elsewhere. The houses were not demolished; they were simply left underwater.

For a long time afterward, no one mentioned it. Until 2001, when media reported that the ancient city beneath the water had been found. Divers went down and, at a depth of twenty or thirty meters, saw stone city gates, paved stone streets, rows of neatly arranged archways, and the outlines of houses. Because the lake water is cold and there is no silt, it is preserved remarkably well, covered in green moss.

The light in the lake is dim, and visibility is not high. A sweep of a flashlight reveals the carved patterns on the walls and the stone lions still there.

Now some places have opened underwater sightseeing; divers go down and have filmed many videos. Some people online say that at night by the lakeside, you can hear the sounds of gongs, drums, and voices coming from underwater. That should be a legend, not true.

Beneath this stretch of water was once home to nearly 300,000 people.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #水下古城