Ningbo
— — a port that has been receiving ships for a thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“Ningbo sits at the mouth of three rivers, the Yong, the Yuyao and the Fenghua, where they meet and turn east to the sea. The harbour has worked continuously since the Tang dynasty. Today it is one of the busiest cargo ports on earth, but the old town still keeps its quiet pockets: Tianyi Pavilion's reading court, the Old Bund along the river, a hundred small noodle counters under the plane trees. — from the studio
Ningbo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ningbo is a sub-provincial city on the coast of Zhejiang, about two hundred twenty kilometres south of Shanghai across Hangzhou Bay. The municipality holds roughly nine and a half million people. The old core sits at Sanjiangkou, the confluence of the Yong, Yuyao and Fenghua rivers, which then runs east to the East China Sea. Ningbo has been a working seaport since at least the Tang dynasty in the eighth century; the combined Ningbo-Zhoushan port now handles more cargo tonnage than any other in the world, with over one and a quarter billion tonnes moved in recent years.
Tianyi Pavilion, built in 1561 by the Ming official Fan Qin, is the oldest surviving private library in China and one of the three oldest in the world. The compound holds about three hundred thousand volumes, including rare local gazetteers and Ming-dynasty examination registers, around a rectangular reading pool that doubles as a firebreak. A few streets east, the Old Bund along the Yong River predates Shanghai's by roughly twenty years; the stone consulates and trading houses from the 1844 treaty-port years still stand, now refitted as cafés and small galleries.
Most visitors arrive at Ningbo Lishe International Airport, about twelve kilometres west of downtown, or by high-speed rail from Shanghai Hongqiao in just under two hours. Tianyi Pavilion is open daily from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, with a small entrance fee and an audio guide in English. The Old Bund and Sanjiangkou are walkable in an evening; the Gulou bell tower neighbourhood and the Tianfeng Pagoda sit within a kilometre. For day trips, Putuoshan, one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism, lies offshore by ferry.