Why it looks like this

The old city sits at Sanjiangkou, 'three rivers mouth', where the Yuyao and Fenghua rivers join to form the Yong and run to the sea. From that junction Ningbo traded with Japan and Korea over a thousand years ago as one of the great ports of the maritime Silk Road, and its merchants later helped build modern Shanghai.

Inside the old town survives Tianyi Ge, a private library founded in 1561 — the oldest surviving library building in China. Modern Ningbo pairs the historic river-junction city with Beilun, one of the world's busiest deep-water container ports, out at the coast.