On an 18th-century map showing the "Irkutsk governorate with the adjacent islands and the western coast of America", the river issuing from Lake Hinka is named as the Usuri.

Budishchev, a captain in the Corps of Foresters, the lake is named as Khinkai (Singkai).

Likewise, in the Middle Ages, the fish fauna of Lake Khanka furnished the tables of both Chinese and Jurchen emperors with an abundance of delicacies.

In Shen Kuo's Dream Pool Essays, a passage called "Strange Happenings" contains a peculiar account of an unidentified flying object.

Shen wrote that, during the reign of Emperor Renzong (1022–1063), an object as bright as a pearl occasionally hovered over the city of Yangzhou at night, but described first by local inhabitants of eastern Anhui and then in Jiangsu.

[5] Shen wrote that a man near Xingkai Lake observed this curious object; allegedly it: ...opened its door and a flood of intense light like sunbeams darted out of it, then the outer shell opened up, appearing as large as a bed with a big pearl the size of a fist illuminating the interior in silvery white.

The intense silver-white light, shot from the interior, was too strong for human eyes to behold; it cast shadows of every tree within a radius of ten miles.

Then all of a sudden, the object took off at a tremendous speed and descended upon the lake like the Sun setting.

The water in the lake is cloudy, which is explained by frequent winds and, as a result, strong mixing.

The lowland of the Prihanka and, in fact, the shores of the lake represent a fairly swampy terrain.

The lake's drainage basin covers an area of 16,890 km2 (6,520 sq mi), of which 97% is in Russian territory.

[1] Popular Culture: The surveyors in the 1975 Akira Kurosawa film "Dersu Uzala" were sent to explore the Lake Khanka region.