Ningbo is the working port behind the romance — a 1,200-year-old city on the East China Sea that opened to foreign trade two decades before Shanghai, and never stopped moving goods since. It keeps China's oldest private library, a Tang-dynasty drum tower, an old Bund of colonial facades now given over to cafes, and a kitchen that treats seafood as a birthright. It is also the jumping-off point for the Buddhist islands of Putuoshan and Zhoushan.
