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This lake lies in a southeast portion of Ning’an County, Heilongjiang Province. According to legend, a beautiful and kindhearted girl named Hongluo lived here. She had a magic mirror. Wherever disaster occurred, she would flash her magic mirror and restore happiness to the people. The celestial empress wanted to get hold of the mirror and sent a deity to steak it away. Hongluo followed the rays of the mirror to the celestial palace, where, seeing the mirror in the hands of the celestial empress, she tried to take it back. But in the scramble, the mirror fell from the sky to the earth – where it instantly became the beautiful Mirror Lake.
The Mirror Lake is, in fact, a dammed lake caused by an ancient volcanic eruption during which the Mudan River was blocked by lava. Covering 1,200 square kilometers, the quiet and clear lake is surrounded by towering mountains and dense forests. Water flowing out from the north bank of the lake forms a waterfall called Diaoshuilou, the biggest in Northeast China. This splendid fall, twenty-five meters high and forty-three meters wide, thunders down a precipice to a deep pool below.
The grotesquely-shaped “pearl corks” and an “underground forest” where trees grow in the crater of four volcanoes add to the attraction of the surrounding wilderness.
(china.org.cn)
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