Home / Wanfeng Lake
Take Wanfenglin, flood the valley floor, and leave the peaks standing in the water. That's roughly what happened here.
"Ten Thousand Peaks Lake" is a reservoir on the Nanpan river, built for hydropower, and it did something accidental and rather beautiful: it drowned a karst valley. The peaks that used to rise above farmland now rise out of water, and the lake threads between them in a maze of arms and channels rather than sitting in one open basin.
It sits on the meeting point of Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi — you can, if you care about that sort of thing, be in three provinces in an afternoon. The shores are fishing country: villages, floating fish farms, boats that are somebody's livelihood rather than a tourist attraction.
The lake is big, and it has several access points on different arms, each with its own jetty and its own boat operators. "Going to Wanfeng Lake" is not one destination the way Wanfenglin is; where you're dropped determines what you see and what boat you can get.
This is the practical reason we're vague here rather than giving you a bus number: the right answer depends on which part of the lake you're headed for and what you want to do when you arrive. Decide that first, then arrange the car. Your accommodation can help, or ask us — we live here and we don't charge for answering a question.
Here's our honest position, and it's not a very salesy one.
| If you have | Our answer |
|---|---|
| 1 day in Xingyi | No. Wanfenglin, all day. Not close. |
| 2 nights | Probably not. Wanfenglin + Maling River Canyon is the stronger pair, and the lake deserves better than the leftover hours. |
| 3 nights | Yes — if you'll give it a slow day. If you'd rather go back to the valley and ride different lanes, that's also a good answer. |
| Longer, or you like water | Yes. Boats, fish, quiet. It's the part of Xingyi that rewards having no schedule. |
The thing to understand is that the lake is not a viewpoint. It doesn't do the thing where you arrive, look, photograph and leave satisfied. Forty minutes at Wanfeng Lake is a waste of a drive; a day at Wanfeng Lake is a good day.
Our first product is the Wanfenglin cycling day. Paddleboarding on the lake is one of the things we'd like to build next, and traveller interest is what decides the order. If a slow day on the water is what you'd want from Xingyi, tell us.