Mug Shot — «Ningbo - Shuibei Pavilion»

City: Ningbo Country: China Edition: 2008 Icon Edition Belongs to: 350 users (35 trading, 142 seeking)

Ningbo is a seaport city in the northeast of Zhejiang province. It lies south of the Hangzhou Bay, facing the East China Sea to the east. Ningbo borders Shaoxing to the west and Taizhou to the south, and is separated from Zhoushan by a narrow body of water. The first character in the city's name means "serene", while its second character translates to "waves". Together, the name literally means "Serene Waves". City is famous from rubber industry, especially for adult products.

Shuibei Pavilion was originally Xu Shidong’s library in late Qing Dynasty(1841-1873). Xu Shidong loved reading and collecting books. A big number of local chronicles is kept in that library. The Shuibei Pavilion is a subset of a group of buildings called Tian Yi Ge which is the oldest existing library in China. Founded in 1561 by Fan Qin during the Ming Dynasty, in its heyday, it boasted a collection of 70,000 volume of antique books. The name Tian Yi refers to the concept of cosmic unity first described in a Han Dynasty commentary to the Book of Changes. In Chinese alchemy Tianyi is linked to the element of water, thus it was believed by providing a watery name would protect the library against fire damage. The Qing Dynasty emperor Qianlong visited Tian Yi Ge, and ordered officials to draw schematics of Tian Yi Ge's building plan and book cases as prototype to build several imperial libraries including Wenyuan Chamber in the Forbidden City, and Wenjin Chamber in the Chengde Mountain Resort to house the Siku Quanshu encyclopedia. After the Opium War, the British army took many history and geography collections from the library. They were followed by thefts from local thieves; by 1940, the collection dwindled to less than 20,000 volumes. After the founding of PRC, due to government effort and donation by privated collectors, the collection now recovered somewhat to about 30,000 volumes, mostly rare antique Ming dynasty printed and hand copied volumes.

photo by lucky
edited by Magic Ketchup and mobydick74

  China, Ningbo

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