Long before the lake existed, the site was simply low ground outside the walls of the Liao and Jin dynasty capital. During those dynasties, from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, the area attracted visitors as open countryside beyond the city gates, but there was no body of water to speak of. The transformation came in 1773, when the Qianlong Emperor ordered springs from the Fragrant Hills channeled into the depression and impounded to form a lake. He built a small imperial palace on its shores for short stays, a retreat from the Forbidden City's formality. The name Yuyuantan, roughly translating to Jade Spring Pool, captured the clarity of those mountain-fed waters.

Imperial attention proved fickle. In the later Qing dynasty, the lakeside palace fell into disuse, and without maintained water channels, the lake shrank toward oblivion. By the early twentieth century, what the Qianlong Emperor had created was little more than a marshy depression. In 1960, the Beijing municipal government intervened decisively, diverting water from the Yongding River to refill the basin. The lake came back to life. Over the following decades, the surrounding land was gradually developed into a proper urban park, with the most consequential addition arriving in the 1990s: thousands of cherry trees, planted in groves that transformed Yuyuantan into Beijing's premier spring destination.

Yuyuantan sits in a neighborhood thick with significance. The Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where foreign heads of state are hosted, borders the park to the east. The China Millennium Monument stands just to the south. The Central Radio and TV Tower rises nearby, its silhouette visible from within the park grounds. Water covers 61 of the park's 137 hectares, making it one of the largest water bodies in central Beijing. In a city defined by density and development, Yuyuantan offers something increasingly rare: open space with deep historical roots, where an emperor's landscaping project became a public commons.