Located in the northeast of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau, the Qinghai Lake borders on the counties of Gonghe and Haiyan in Qinghai Province, at an altitude of 3.195 meters above sea level. The maximum depth of the lake is 32.8 meters with an average depth of 19 meters. It covers about an area of 4.583 square kilometers, 360 kilometers in circumference, ranking the first of all continental salt-water lake in China.
It has three islands, Birds Island, Haixinshan Island and Sand Island.
Qinghai Lake is also famous for its naked carp, which is the only fish in the lake; it is also called the Scaleless Carp. Because of the complicated natural environments, the fish has been degenerated to be scale less over the centuries. The naked carps live on plants and planktons in the lake and grow very slowly but very long due to the low water temperature. For this reason, it has been introduced to the similar lakes in Inner Mongolia and Liaoning Province.