This time last year I didn’t even know it exists. It’s no wonder, since I didn’t know that Xi’an, Wuhan, Wenzhou, Chengdu and many other places important for Chinese history or today’s economy exist. I did know about Beijing and Shanghai, but not about the rest of the cities, some of which are more populated than Paris or London.
Ningbo is there, population of more than seven million. Apparently has a 4800 year long history and was an important trade point of the silk route. Then Arabs, Jews and Europeans came and brought their merchandise to China, some of them settled down.
If we were talking about Europe, this history would have probably shaped a huge, vivid city, with beautiful, vibrant old town in the middle, buzzing with tourists and nightlife. It would inspire artists and promote culture. One or two great Chinese artist would have been born here and we would see their statues on the squares. There would be signs on some old buildings “such and such a famous person lived here for x years and composed the work y.”
But we are in China.
Actually, I don’t mean that the city is empty of beauty and culture. It is not. Nevertheless, a lot has happened that has not happened in Europe: opium wars, civil wars, Japanese invasion and many other fun things that we are still not supposed to talk about while we are residents of this wonderful but scarred country. Those events left almost everything that was old in ruin, leaving only the remains of what the old town might have been, had it the opportunity to last. There are some ancient temples, like Tiantong temple, visited last year by me. There is a sacred island for the Buddhists, Putuoshan. There is Laowei tang, a place for the foreigners to go to an Irish pub and pretend they are in Europe, beautiful boulevards, ingeniously lit at night. There is an art museum with works of a Chinese painter who inspired Picasso.
According to my colleague Michael, who’s been coming here to teach for years, six years ago you could see the tower of the University of Nottingham (a sister university of the University of Nottingham in actual Nottingham. I believe that the one in Ningbo must be the original one) from anywhere in the northern part of the city. There were only universities, roads that led there and rice fields. Now I can see the tower way down below from my balcony on the fifteenth floor and I’m lucky, as the sky-scrapers around me pretty much limit the view. Everything is new and probably wasn’t here when I graduated from high-school (which was not long time ago). It’s a city made of glass and lights with parks in between, fortunately. At night it lights up in artificial colours.
Ningbo is inhabited by foreigners and 90% of them work for Nottingham. Therefore, people do not become friends only because they are not Chinese. However, it doesn’t influence the ability of the local people to speak English. It is too expensive to study English.
It is an extremely wealthy and expensive city. The religious diversity is amazing. There are Buddhists, obviously, but also a lot of Muslims, which is apparent due to the amount of Halal restaurants easy to find anywhere in the city. This part of China is very Christian and there are two big churches in Ningbo. The first one is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Laoweitang built in the eighteenth century. It looks like somebody cut it off a picture of Europe and pasted into the Chinese city; as if you cut off a picture of a gorilla’s head and stuck it to the body of a girl wearing a pink dress. Another one, is in fact pink, a huge Protestant church close to Tienyi square, a huge shopping area.
As to Ningbo’s culture, I make promise to try to explore the remains of it and describe it here. As for now, I only discovered that there are cafes and pubs nearby that sell German beer and I am welcome to come there and play the piano. The owner plays really well and gave me his notes saying: Go ahead, play! That’s when I discovered that the Chinese write notes differently. Why am I not surprised?
Ningbo is there, population of more than seven million. Apparently has a 4800 year long history and was an important trade point of the silk route. Then Arabs, Jews and Europeans came and brought their merchandise to China, some of them settled down.
If we were talking about Europe, this history would have probably shaped a huge, vivid city, with beautiful, vibrant old town in the middle, buzzing with tourists and nightlife. It would inspire artists and promote culture. One or two great Chinese artist would have been born here and we would see their statues on the squares. There would be signs on some old buildings “such and such a famous person lived here for x years and composed the work y.”
But we are in China.
Actually, I don’t mean that the city is empty of beauty and culture. It is not. Nevertheless, a lot has happened that has not happened in Europe: opium wars, civil wars, Japanese invasion and many other fun things that we are still not supposed to talk about while we are residents of this wonderful but scarred country. Those events left almost everything that was old in ruin, leaving only the remains of what the old town might have been, had it the opportunity to last. There are some ancient temples, like Tiantong temple, visited last year by me. There is a sacred island for the Buddhists, Putuoshan. There is Laowei tang, a place for the foreigners to go to an Irish pub and pretend they are in Europe, beautiful boulevards, ingeniously lit at night. There is an art museum with works of a Chinese painter who inspired Picasso.
According to my colleague Michael, who’s been coming here to teach for years, six years ago you could see the tower of the University of Nottingham (a sister university of the University of Nottingham in actual Nottingham. I believe that the one in Ningbo must be the original one) from anywhere in the northern part of the city. There were only universities, roads that led there and rice fields. Now I can see the tower way down below from my balcony on the fifteenth floor and I’m lucky, as the sky-scrapers around me pretty much limit the view. Everything is new and probably wasn’t here when I graduated from high-school (which was not long time ago). It’s a city made of glass and lights with parks in between, fortunately. At night it lights up in artificial colours.
Ningbo is inhabited by foreigners and 90% of them work for Nottingham. Therefore, people do not become friends only because they are not Chinese. However, it doesn’t influence the ability of the local people to speak English. It is too expensive to study English.
It is an extremely wealthy and expensive city. The religious diversity is amazing. There are Buddhists, obviously, but also a lot of Muslims, which is apparent due to the amount of Halal restaurants easy to find anywhere in the city. This part of China is very Christian and there are two big churches in Ningbo. The first one is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Laoweitang built in the eighteenth century. It looks like somebody cut it off a picture of Europe and pasted into the Chinese city; as if you cut off a picture of a gorilla’s head and stuck it to the body of a girl wearing a pink dress. Another one, is in fact pink, a huge Protestant church close to Tienyi square, a huge shopping area.
As to Ningbo’s culture, I make promise to try to explore the remains of it and describe it here. As for now, I only discovered that there are cafes and pubs nearby that sell German beer and I am welcome to come there and play the piano. The owner plays really well and gave me his notes saying: Go ahead, play! That’s when I discovered that the Chinese write notes differently. Why am I not surprised?
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