The Splendour of Spring and Autumn: A Tapestry of Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is the crystallisation of the wisdom of working people through the ages, a living witness to the culture of a nation. Over the past two decades, Ningbo has promoted and implemented cultural protection projects, achieving the active rescue, scientific preservation, rational use, and effective management of cultural heritage and ethnic folk art.

Placing Protection First

To protect cultural heritage is to safeguard the roots and the spirit of the nation. The project to trace the origins of prehistoric culture and maritime civilisation in the Ningbo region has been continuously advanced.

In 2013, two villagers herding sheep in Sanqishi Town, Yuyao City, found some shells and pottery shards in soil cores from geological drilling at a construction site. After nearly a decade of tireless effort by local government and archaeologists, the Jingtoushan site—the deepest and earliest coastal shell mound site ever unearthed in China—came to light, earning recognition as one of the “Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China” of 2020. This discovery pushed Ningbo’s history back by some one thousand years.

The civilisation of the Ningbo region has formed its own distinctive identity, marked by a pronounced maritime character. In 2024, the Ningbo Daily Press Group organised a large-scale “Tracing the Origins of Chinese Maritime Civilisation” reporting project, which lasted four months, covered 40,000 miles, and spanned five countries, in search of the origins, diffusion and innovation of maritime civilisation. In the first half of this year, our city launched the “Tracing the Origins of Ningbo Regional Civilisation Project” with high-level planning and at high standards, undertaking interdisciplinary research in a comprehensive, multi-faceted, and multi-layered manner. With vivid archaeological discoveries and the latest research findings, it will provide scientific demonstration of the unique status and contribution of Ningbo regional civilisation in the formation of Chinese civilisation.

By exploring the practice of “archaeology before land transfer,” a series of imprints of human civilisation buried underground have been effectively preserved. Hemudu Culture, the site of the ancient city of Juzhang, the site of Mingzhou Luocheng, the Dayan Saltworks site… one major archaeological discovery after another has constantly renewed the world’s understanding of the historical essence of Siming land.

Culture is a cause that nurtures minds and cultivates character. Cultural venues are vessels of culture. From the establishment of landmarks such as Ningbo Grand Theatre, Ningbo Museum of Art, and Ningbo Concert Hall along the banks of the Three Rivers, to the accelerated construction today of cultural landmarks such as the Southern Pavilion of Tianyi Pavilion and the Wang Yangming Memorial Hall, Ningbo is building a “City of Museums” characterised by “first-class museums taking the lead, district and county museums being sound, and diverse specialised museums flourishing.”

Culture civilises and culture conveys the Way. Over the past 20 years, Ningbo has consistently implemented the principle of prioritising protection, placing cultural heritage protection at the forefront, and has built a resource system of cultural heritage that is comprehensive in type, abundant in number, and distinctive in character. At present, our city has 33 major sites protected at the national level, 28 items on the national intangible cultural heritage list, and the number and quality of cultural heritage resources rank at the forefront of national historical and cultural cities and among municipalities with independent planning status.

Systems First, Technology Empowered

Bearing in mind the instructions and living up to expectations, Ningbo has, over the past two decades, from the guiding principles of cultural protection to specific pathways of practice, continually strengthened its leadership in cultural heritage protection. It has increased legislative and safeguard measures, streamlined working mechanisms, and continuously expanded investment.

The Grand Canal is both a lifeline for the people and a thread of history. In 2014, the successful inscription of the Grand Canal as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site saw the Ningbo section (“two stretches and one point”) included as an important component. Thus, Ningbo gained its first World Cultural Heritage site. Protecting, transmitting, and making good use of this thousand-year-old river is an unshirkable responsibility for the people of Ningbo in the new era. In 2023, Ningbo issued the Implementation Measures for the Protection of the Grand Canal World Cultural Heritage, establishing a sound and efficient system of supervision and governance, thereby fundamentally resolving problems of overlapping and absent management. By taking the law as the standard of action and the foundation of governance, Ningbo has persevered in safeguarding the eastward flow of clear waters, allowing the Ningbo section of the Grand Canal to once again display the beauty of “smoke-shrouded embankments with orioles singing in the trees, cloud and water entwined as egrets stand on islets,” and the grandeur of “winds rise and tides roar across the sea, rain parts and rainbow shadows hang in mid-air.”

Over the past 20 years, Ningbo has continuously raised the technological level of cultural heritage protection and refined the work mechanisms. Using drones and 3D laser scanning technology, ancient buildings are modelled with centimetre-level accuracy, completing in three days what traditional surveying would require three weeks to achieve, with data error controlled within two millimetres. This technology has already been applied to the protection of 10 endangered ancient buildings. The Northern Song Dynasty main hall (Xiangfu Hall) of Baoguo Temple has achieved real-time monitoring of material changes and environmental data, enabling structural health assessment and risk early warning for timber-frame architecture, providing a model of preventive protection. In the restoration of the Qing’an Guildhall, digital scanning was used to record more than 1,000 carvings.

Protecting cultural heritage should also be a “grand chorus” of the whole of society. A “three-in-one” model of intangible heritage protection has been established, linking projects, inheritors, and bases, and forming a collaborative mechanism among government, enterprises, and society. In co-construction and sharing, heritage protection has shifted from passive to proactive, and emotional connections between people and cultural heritage have become closer. Participation by all, transmission from generation to generation. The distinctive cultures of a port city—Maritime Silk Road culture, Yangming culture, and book-collecting culture—have been incorporated into local traditional culture courses. In Haishu, 28 protected cultural sites including Tianyi Pavilion and the Qing’an Guildhall have been linked to launch a “Follow the Textbook, Tour Ningbo” study tour route. At the Yuyao birthplace of Wang Yangming, in an immersive theatre of the “Journey of Mind,” tourists, through role play, can relive the “Enlightenment at Longchang.”

Balancing Protection and Development

Correctly managing the relationship between cultural heritage protection and economic and social development, and between protection and utilisation, inheritance and management, is a pressing question of the times.

In recent years, Ningbo has continued to strengthen the transmission and utilisation of cultural heritage, bringing it new vitality and brilliance in the new era.

Cicheng Ancient Town exudes timeless charm, dotted with sparks of light; Minghe Ancient Town, weathered and austere, brims with vigour; Qiantong Ancient Town, with its grey bricks and black tiles, is accompanied by the murmuring of flowing water. Carpenters, painters, masons, bamboo weavers, carvers… in Qiantong Ancient Town, along its 1,500-metre-long old street, dozens of “guardians of craftsmanship” are gathered, their traditional skills brought to life in vivid displays that attract throngs of visitors. The commercial logic of streets and scenic areas gives intangible heritage a modern survival context, while the cultural depth of intangible heritage reshapes the spiritual core of neighbourhoods. At this moment, the ancient street is both a consumer scene and an entry point for the integration of culture and tourism.

Our city has nine historic and cultural towns, 72 historic and cultural villages, 1,311 historic buildings, 12 historic and cultural districts, and 18 historic areas, as well as 671 cultural relic protection units of various levels and more than 1,000 cultural relic protection points of various levels. How can the historical value and cultural connotation of ancient buildings and old houses be deeply explored, so that traditional culture and modern life may be integrated? In recent years, Ningbo has adhered to preserving the traditional styles and layout features of historic buildings, while repurposing suitable ones as museums, exhibition halls, intangible heritage centres, guesthouses, or research bases. The Qianye Guildhall, a major site protected at the national level, has in recent years been revitalised through the integration of cultural creativity and tourism, forming a unique financial culture experience space. Citizens, amidst the “clatter” of abacuses, step into a “century-old money house” and, through interactive activities such as deciphering account books and rubbing coins, learn about financial history.

From the revival plan of the thousand-year-old Luocheng ancient city, to the high-standard development of the “Three Lakes Song Dynasty Cultural Tourism Belt” around Cihu, Yuehu, and Dongqian Lake… where rivers and seas converge, where city and port rely on each other, where three rivers meet six banks steeped in ancient charm. The rich and varied cultural heritage, scattered like stars, has become both an economic resource and a spiritual force for achieving common prosperity.