The ‘No. 1 ancient street in eastern Zhejiang’ – Hanling Old Street is located on the south bank of Dongqian Lake. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the lake on one side, it has beautiful natural scenery. It belongs to the Nanhu Scenic Area of Dongqian Lake and is about 20 kilometers away from downtown Ningbo. Hanling Village has a long history. It is said that it got its name because people with the surname Han lived here in early years.
According to research, there were residents here when Dongqian Lake was dredged in the third year of Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty (744 AD). When Wang Anshi governed Yin (in the eighth year of Qingli period of the Northern Song Dynasty, 1048 AD), he rebuilt the lake boundary. At that time, Hanling Village had formed regular fairs on the fifth and tenth days. When Shi Hao, the prime minister of the Southern Song Dynasty (1140 AD), passed through Hanling to go to Xiashui Village, his ancestral home, in his book ‘Touring the Mountains of East Lake’, there is a sentence ‘There is a village named Hanling in the middle. The sounds of fishermen’s songs and woodcutters’ axes are intertwined’, which shows that Hanling fair was already somewhat famous at that time. In the following hundreds of years, Hanling was once an important transportation hub and water-land hub center connecting Ningbo downtown with Xiangshan Port. There are two old streets in Hanling, namely the front street and the back street, running through the whole village. Commerce is concentrated on the front street, with a total length of more than 500 meters. It is further divided into lower street, middle street and upper street. More than thirty shops in the village are mostly concentrated on the lower street. In the middle of the lower street, there is a street creek flowing slowly. Originally, the whole street was paved with dark green pebbles. Now it is a cement road. In addition, the old street still maintains the appearance of hundreds of years ago: on both sides are all two-story buildings with grey tiles, white walls and red-painted door faces. One is connected to another and stretches forward. The place names left by the fair back then are still in use, such as ‘Under the Bamboo Shed’ and ‘Firewood Yard’. There is also a small sand well in the village. The well water is warm in winter and cool in summer and has a hint of sweetness. Although there is tap water in the village, the villagers still like to drink the water from the small sand well. Open all year round and open all day.Hanling Old Street
The ‘No. 1 ancient street in eastern Zhejiang’ – Hanling Old Street is located on [...]
