Nikong Pool
The Nikong Pool or Ningkong Tang (Chinese: 泥孔塘), is a lake in the Huajiachi Campus, Zhejiang University (Hangzhou City, People's Republic of China).
Introduction
Ni (泥) means mud, kong (孔) means hole here in Chinese. On the bottom of the lake, there're some holes linking it to the Huajiachi, which is the second largest lake in Hangzhou after the famous West Lake.
The lake is just close to the Huajiachi and in between there's a claybank. On the claybank there's a nice long porch, so that people can pass-by, and have a rest, view the beautiful landscapes of both the lakes and the campus. People's feeling about this claybank is so similar to the Sudi (苏堤) which is a very famous historic site near the West Lake, so the claybank is named as Little Sudi, Because it has a much smaller size.
Whether the lake is formed naturally or artificially, people nowadays cannot know. One guess is that the lake was built in the ancient time for serving the agricultural irrigation nearby, most probably during the Ming Dynasty. [1]