Gold-emerging Lake used to be a small river that linked West Lake and Yunsi River. It was made by Governor Ling of Jinhua County at time of King Wu Yue, and later used as a water gate. Yangpan wrote a poem describing that: “Alas! Beauty of late spring glows at Gold-emerging River, where peach flowers are blown off into the sky. Who will be so lucky to get these petal flowers? Thousands of families where the river is to pass by.” In May of the third year (936) of King Qingtai’s ruling period in the Later Tang Dynasty, Water Gate was renamed as Gold-emerging Gate. The water sluice Water Gate used to have was also renamed as gold-emerging sluice, whose relics lies at point close to the lake in today’s Laonian Park. In Chapter 114: Zhangshun Turned God at Gold-emerging Gate in of “Outlaws of the Marsh” refers to the current Gold-emerging Gate.

In addition to the Legend of Madam White Snake, there are many folk tales related to West Lake, such as the story of Gold Bull: according to the legend passed down, in the Han Dynasty, there was a gold bull at the bottom of West Lake. When West Lake dried down, the gold bull would showed up from the lake bottom, and sprayed water from its mouth to fill up the lake, so that the dwellers around the lake may have enough water to drink and to irrigate the crops.

Hearing that there was a gold bull at lake bottom, local officials wanted to catch this gold bull and consecrate it to the emperor for the purpose of pleasing him and obtaining a higher official positions. So they ordered the people to dry up the lake by drawing water from it. When the water was drawn and the lake was dried, the bull did show up. On seeing this, officials all ran down into the lake to catch it, which, unexpectedly, blew a fuse of the bull, and the bull jetted water into the lake quickly and drowned those greedy evil officials.

Thereafter, West Lake has never been dry again, and so the gold bull has never again showed up.　

In October 2002, a sculpture of “Gold Bull Emerging from Water” was placed into the Gold-emerging Lake; in 2003, south line of West Lake was restructured to resemble the views of the ancient gold-emerging river, and a stone tablet with inscription of “Gold-emerging Lake”.