Little Zhejiang Province (Zhèjing, 浙江) is one of China's wealthiest, home of former imperial capital Hangzhou, terminus of the Grand Canal and today home to bustling trade cities like Yiwu. From busy ports to tranquil river towns, rugged mountains and jungles to waterway-etched urban landscapes, Zhejiang provides a diversity of travel opportunities for its size.
Former imperial capital of the Song Dynasty, Hangzhou is the major draw of the province with its urban sprawl broken by the romantic willow-lined West Lake (Xi Hu). Long considered one of the most beautiful places in China, it shares this reputation in the minds of Westerners since Marco Polo visited during the 13th Century, describing it as "the most beautiful and magnificent city in the world." While the Hangzhou seen by Marco Polo has been lost to time and the Taiping Rebellion, the Chinese maxim still fits: "In heaven, paradise; on earth Hangzhou and Suzhou."
Though parts still resemble any other second-tier Chinese city, West Lake dominates the southwestern part of Hangzhou giving it an altogether different character. A famous retreat and spot of beauty dating back far into Chinese history, the area around the lake is dotted with historic spots like former imperial vacation spot Solitary Hill (Gu Shan), Lingyin Temple atop Feilai Feng and Liuhe Pagoda along the Qiantang River. Tea is also a major part of the cultural heritage of Hangzhou, known as the home of famous "Dragon Well" or "Longjing" tea. Because the water used to brew the tea is considered integral to the process as well, the Longjing Tea Plantation pulls its name from its renowned well while Running Tiger Dream Spring owes its fame to the quality of its water (and possibly its fantastic origin story).
A few hours by bus or train from Hangzhou, Ningbo was once the area's major port before the rise of Shanghai. The Old Bund (Lao Waitan), now full of bars and restaurants occupying historic and faux-historic buildings left from its time as the city's foreign concession, predates Shanghai's famous Bund while Tianyi Pavilion is one of the oldest libraries in Asia. Since its connection to Shanghai via the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, Ningbo has seen dramatic commercial growth, though with a continued interest in maintaining the character of areas like beautiful Moon Lake, a historic area of tea houses, restaurants and gardens.
Just north of Ningbo, Beilun still serves as an important deepwater port in the region and jumping off point to Putuo Shan, an island home to one of China's Buddhist holy mountains. The largely car-free island is dedicated to the Bodhisattva Guanyin as evidenced by the massive Nanhai Guanyin statue that looks out over the sea from the island's shore. Temples like the Fayu Temple dot the hilly island along paths winding beneath green tree canopies.
Putuo Shan is just one of the Zhoushan Islands off the Ningbo coast. Though Putuo Shan is not, many of the others are now connected to the mainland via a series of bridges.
Escape from the urban cacophony of China's bustling eastern cities exist on the mainland as well—the Tianhe Scenic Area abounds in natural beauty, cragged peaks, caves and waterfalls. From Ningbo, the quiet shores of Dongqian Lake are about an hour away. The lush, green slopes of Mogan Shan—a once-exclusive summer retreat for Shanghai's elite—still provide a cool, natural escape from the muggy heat radiating off of the bustling Shanghai streets.
Radiating from the Grand Canal north of Hangzhou as well as the myriad rivers and waterways that crisscross Zhejiang are a number of pristine watertowns that hold out as examples of traditional Chinese communities even as they evolve to meet the demands of the modern world. Like Suzhou in Jiangsu, but somewhat more successfully, ancient Shaoxing has sought to not lose the charm of its traditional homes lining serene canals. Despite being home to China Textile City, one of the largest textile markets in the world, the past is remembered and preserved in areas like the residence of Lu Xun, one of China's most famous twentieth century writers. Another of China's famous writers, Mao Dun, also came from one of Zhejiang's prosperous river towns, Wuzhen. A somewhat unknown gem among its kind, Wuzhen is like a town-size museum. With boat rides. Along with Nanxun, and a number of Jiangsu's river towns, Wuzhen received a UNESCO Asian-Pacific Heritage Award for its preservation of traditional architecture.
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The beginnings of civilization in Zhejiang
While the cultures that would be written down as China's founding dynasties developed around the Yellow River Valley, civilization grew as well in the fertile region of northern Zhejiang. As early as 8,000 years ago, the Neolithic Hemudu culture thrived in the area south of Hangzhou Bay, cultivating rice and living in stilt houses. Much later, one of China's legendary rulers, Yu the Great, founder of China's legendary first dynasty, the Xia Dynasty, purportedly died touring the frontier south of his lands and was buried in a tomb beside a mountain near Shaoxing.
From a son of Yu, or so they claimed, came the Yue Kingdom, who established their capital at Shaoxing after defeat by their rivals the Jiangsu-based Wu Kingdom. The king of Yue, long held prisoner by the Wu was said to have distracted the king of Wu with women (including one of China's famous "four beauties") to ensure the kindom's fall to his own in 473 BC. The Yue were ultimately conquered by another state who were in turn to fall under the banner of the Qin Empire, joining Northern Zhejiang to the rest of what would become China. The Chinese hold on Zhejiang was extended by Han Dynasty expeditions deeper into Zhejiang, through to Fujian, suppressing the Minyue Kingdom, founded by the royal family of the Yue Kingdom that formerly held Shaoxing.
With the decline and fall of Han Dynasty, China again fragmented during the Three Kingdoms Period and the Wu Kingdom—taking the same name as the earlier Jiangsu-based kingdom—consolidated power in northern Zhejiang. The aristocratic families of the region maintained their influence beyond the Wu Kingdom and through a succession of kingdoms arising from the power center south of the Yangtze River Valley.
Rise of trade hubs in Zhejiang
Zhejiang, along with the rest of the Yangzte River Valley, returned to China proper with the rise of the Sui Dynasty. Canals in northern Zhejiang were expanded throughout the region, creating the Grand Canal, which would be expanded upon in succeeding dynasties to move goods between coastal cities and the capital. Between the Sui and successive Tang and Song dynasties, development in Ningbo, Hangzhou and Shaoxing boomed as the cities became important ports of trade for both domestic and international trade.
During the 12th century, Chinese imperial capital moved south, to Shaoxing then Hangzhou, after Jurchen invaders from the north took the capital at Kaifeng. In an attempt to regain lost territory, the Song Dynasty rulers joined forces with the Mongols, who were encroaching quickly into Jurchen territory. After several peaceful decades, the Mongols turned on their erstwhile allies, establishing the Yuan Dynasty. Though the new rulers relocated the capital to Beijing, Hangzhou continued to thrive and was the object of much praise by Marco Polo when he visited the city near the end of the 13th century.
Trade flourished along the Grand Canal, which reached its zenith during the rule of the Ming Dynasty, which also saw the formal establishment of Zhejiang. The Ming government attempted to place restrictions on their international trade, which flourished throughout Southeast Asia at the time, with trade moving through Chinese coastal cities like Ningbo. Piracy plagued the coast, mostly blamed on the Japanese, and disputes arose between the government and trading nations. Official trade with Japan was damaged by their competing embassies in Ningbo while first European power to enter Zhejiang officially, the Portuguese, caused enough trouble to see the destruction of their trading communities and scores dead by order of the Zhejiang authorities.
Power in trade was reversed to European powers' favor during the late Qing Dynasty when British frustration over highly controlled trade with China erupted into the First Opium War in 1839 after the seizing of British opium by Chinese officials in Guangdong. In Zhejiang, the British successfully occupied the fortified coastal town of Zhenhai then Ningbo and Zhoushan Island. Ningbo, along with five other Chinese cities, would be forced open to foreign trade in the first of many "unequal treaties" with foreign powers. To chagrin of British authorities, their occupation of prosperous Zhoushan Island would be traded for their acquisition of the "barren rock" Hong Kong.
Sandwiched between the two Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion saw a pseudo-Christian movement with egalitarian ideas make impressive territorial gains in their march up from the middle of southern China. The whole of Zhejiang fell to the Taiping forces, though foreign powers remained neutral, even in Ningbo, where trade sparked up between the captured city and the foreign settlement at the Old Bund. Eventually, eight foreign nations joined the Qing in crushing the Taiping Rebellion, at the cost of great destruction to Zhejiang, especially the once glorious gem of Hangzhou.
The coming of a modern Zhejiang
The decline of the Qing and humiliation at the hands of foreign powers saw to the rise of revolutionary ideas and embracing of new arts and philosophies. Writers like Lu Xun of Shaoxing and Mao Dun of Wuzhen were among other writers in Zhejiang and across China questioning the strict, traditional orthodoxies that had long dominated Chinese thought and art. Revolutionaries like Shaoxing-born Qiu Jin and Xu Xilin took up more than pens against the ailing Qing Dynasty. Nearby Shanghai with its foreign settlement, which had eclipsed Ningbo's foreign settlement, became a safe haven for many looking to create a new China.
Following the fall of the Qing and the subsequent shuffling of power in Beijing, Zhejiang fell into the hands of warlords until its acquisition into the Republic of China following the Northern Expedition, when the Nationalist government under Xikou-born Chiang Kai-shek sought to reunite China again under one government.
The relative peace was shattered by open war with Japan in 1937. Starting in the north, Japan's invasion didn't spare Zhejiang. After American pilots parachuted out over Zhejiang and Jiangxi province when their planes ran out of fuel during an air raid on Japan, Japanese forces looking for them left massive destruction in their wake. Later aerial bombardments of Zhejiang damaged cities including Ningbo and Hangzhou; the former also suffered cases of the bubonic plague due to the dropping disease-carrying fleas spread by the Japanese planes. Before their defeat, the Japanese were able to take control of much of coastal China, including Zhejiang.
In 1949, the year of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Zhejiang was one of the most advanced economies in China. Growing of cash crops, other agricultural activities like fishing, and manufacturing and crafts contributed to the province's growth, as had its financial sector—parts of which are recalled in Ningbo's Banking Guild Hall Museum.
The success of the province was stymied by the move from private industry to collectives. During the years of Maoism, Zhejiang's growth rate dropped behind that of the nation's average growth rates. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), farming of grain in Zhejiang replaced cash crops, also contributing to the financial decline. Many local leaders tolerated or encouraged private industry, however, and, despite the emphasis on grain, Zhejiang became China's main tea producer.
When the Cultural Revolution arrived in the mid-sixties, the province was thrown into turmoil as violent as anywhere in the country as factions battled to see who was more revolutionary and Red Guards defaced or destroyed representations of "Old China," including temples on the Buddhist holy island Putuo Shan.
With China's opening up in the late 1970s, Zhejiang rebounded, becoming second in economic growth only to Guangdong. Small-scale processing enterprises developed and growth in the province's private economy, including manufacturing and transportation, drove Zhejiang's redevelopment. Places like Yiwu and China Textile City in Shaoxing have become major players in trade, while Ningbo's deepwater port in Beilun has become one of largest in the country.
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