5 Days in Ningbo

The walled garden of Tianyi Pavilion, built between 1561 and 1566 by the retired minister Fan Qin, holds what grew to some 70,000 volumes at its Ming peak — the oldest private library surviving in China; the lake beside it makes the afternoon.

1. ningbo tianyi pavilion
2. ningbo yuehu lake

The riverfront opened as a treaty port in 1844, two decades before Shanghai's Bund, its church tower raised in 1872; the Drum Tower marks the Tang-era town founded in 821; evening on the canal-side food street.

1. ningbo old bund
2. ningbo gulou
3. ningbo nantang old street

Some 20 square kilometres of water about 15 km from town — three times the size of West Lake — with a park gathering the stone figures of Southern Song tomb ways on its shore.

1. ningbo dongqian lake
2. ningbo southern song stones

About 40 km west, the river town of Xikou keeps the old family houses of its best-known modern family — visits are of the buildings and their history, plainly told; above it, the Xuedou temple area has stood for over a thousand years, with a tall single-drop fall nearby.

1. ningbo xikou
2. ningbo xuedou mountain

The Hemudu site west of the city, found in 1973, holds the remains of a village of some 7,000 years ago — pile dwellings and early rice — in a museum opened in 1993; on the way back, the wooden hall of Baoguo temple, rebuilt in 1013, is the oldest surviving timberwork of the lower Yangtze.

1. ningbo hemudu site
2. ningbo baoguo temple