The northern lake makes up the public Beihai Park while the southern two are grouped together as Zhongnanhai, the headquarters for the Communist leadership of the People's Republic of China.

The earlier Taiye Lake was excavated in the Han dynasty by the Emperor Wu in the 1st century BC as part of his Jianzhang Palace (建章宮, Jiànzhānggōng).

[2] The second Taiye Lake in Xi'an was excavated in the Tang dynasty by the Emperor Taizong next to his father's Daming Palace, after the capital had been relocated several miles northward due to the growing salinity of the water source at the original site.

The purity of the reservoir was protected by law: from its source at a spring on Yuquan Mountain to Lake Taiye, the Jinshui was given separate passes where it crossed other streams and commoners were forbidden to bathe, wash clothes, water livestock, or dump trash along its course.

The soil excavated from the lake and the fortress's moat were piled up to the palace's north to form the Mountain of Long Life (now known as Jingshan), burying the former Yuan site and improving the fengshui of the new one.

[10] After the establishment of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in the 17th century, the new government reduced the extensive Ming-era parks around the lake, enclosed the smaller present-day area within walls attached to the imperial palace, and began calling the separate sections by their modern names.