As a typical mountain area at the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in Southwest China, the Erhai Lake Basin has uneven precipitation (frequent droughts and floods), affected by the Southwest Monsoon in Asia and significant vertical zonal differences determined by local topography. Though with such harsh physical environment, this area sustained development in ancient times and has been considered a typical resilience case in many studies. With extensive investigation of various historical archives, this paper explores the situation and changes of water management in the Erhai Basin during the past 300 years, and aims to identify local factors in maintaining resilience to water stresses. Findings indicate that various strong and smart social regulations (governance, institutions, plans, management, motivations, orders, donations, dedication, etc.) enabled a wise development of many water conservancy projects that set up an effective irrigation system at the flat basin center. Lots of stream dams, sluice gates and terraced croplands jointly further enabled water storage, drainage and irrigation at the surrounding hillside areas. Additionally, by adopting drought-resistant and cold-resistant crops, agriculture production kept increasing and successfully fed the growing population. The complex but systematically developed river canal system, with its dams, reservoirs, and sluice gates, as well as adaptive cropping strategies, together maintained and enhanced the resilience of local communities to hydrological hazards. Over the 300 years of the study period, the changing water environment and the developing water conservancy projects showed a resilience loop, which offers a simple but valuable perspective on building human-water resilience in face of current and future water crises in this region and beyond. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.