Tong Lianjie, a diver in Qiandao Lake, doesn’t know even now why he loves underwater cameras and why he loves diving into the manmade lake and why he is obsessed with photographing the towns and villages at the bottom of the reservoir in Chun’an, a rural county in the western suburb of Hangzhou.

But 37-year-old Tong has conducted over 700 underwater shooting missions over the past four years. The photographs and videos he has taken reveal a lost world that got submerged in the late 1950s when the mountainous region came under water to give way to Xin’an River Reservoir. Underwater towns and villages add up to more than 3,000 in the Qiandao Lake.

As a native of Chun’an, his life is closely associated with water. The lake was there when he was born. Swimming was an essential skill every boy around the lake learned to master in his boyhood years. After he grew up, he served for about two years as a fire fighter. He was an amateur photographer. Then he joined a local volunteer rescue organization which responds to emergencies on the lake. He took part in many emergency responses. It was these rescue missions that enabled him to learn to dive and to get a glimpse into underwater towns and villages. 

He dived into water, became a professional cameraman, and fell in love with underwater photography. He enjoys serenity, beauty and absence of disturbance, which his underwater professional photographing missions have brought him.

Tong is a licensed diver. He has a full range of diving equipment. He needed underwater video cameras and expertise. He learned from his friends and he read books on the subject. Rescue missions and underwater photography are totally different. Rescue missions emphasize speed and efficiency in saving life whereas underwater photographing requires stability. He has no idea how much money the passion has cost him so far, but last year he upgraded his underwater photography system which includes an underwater drone, sonar, and an SLR camera. It cost him about 300,000 yuan.

Tong took his first underwater photographing mission in the summer of 2017. He spent about half a year preparing for the mission. The target was Xujiayuan, an ancient village which is about 30 meters underwater. He and his partner dived. It took the two divers about 20 minutes to reach the depth of 30 meters. Tong saw the ancient buildings: brick walls, wooden staircases, and woodcarving. He photographed. Suddenly, the snorkel diving mask leaked and he inhaled water. He coughed vehemently. He instantly knew he was in serious trouble. He decided to go up immediately. Fortunately, his partner noticed his situation and immediately came to his rescue. They stopped going up every five meters. Twenty minutes later, they emerged from water. The underwater adventure produced a 15-minute video record. It was the first video sixty years after the village had been underwater. Tong distributed the video among his friends. The beauty took their breath away.

Tong knows how challenging it is to photograph underwater. Most well preserved towns and villages underwater in the lake are about 40 meters and 50 meters down. Rain and wind can affect visibility at that ideal depth. He has difficulty finding a professional scuba diver as his diving partner in Chun’an and he cannot dive alone without someone close by watching out for him. There are about only three to five months in a year that visibility and transparency are ideal for underwater photographing. And he needs governmental permission to do underwater photography missions. He strictly follows a set of rules: he never touches anything underwater and never brings anything up from the sites he visits.

Over the past 4 years, he has taken about 30,000 photos and 150 hours of videos. And he generously shares the visual beauty of the lake with the public on the condition that none is used for commercial purpose.