Ideas

=Ningbo History= []

Why is Beilun called Beilun?
=Why is Ningbo called Ningbo?=

The name of the city means �calm wave�, which shows the close relationship between the city and the water.
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Interesting Facts:
Ningbo is a prosperous city in Zhejiang and also one of the most popular tourist cities in Eastern China. The people of Ningbo have throughout their history had a deep affinity for the ocean. Two thousand years ago, Xu Fu, a necromancer of the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), led a fleet from here, thus becoming the first to commence China's exchanges with other countries. In the early 20th century "Hong-band" tailors from Ningbo traveled extensively throughout China making their living.

The discovery of Hemudu Neolithic Culture Ruins proves that Ningbo was one of the first places in the world for cultivating rice.

Ningbo has China's existing oldest private library.

Massacre of Portuguese community

Ningbo was where the Portuguese first encoutered the Japanese

Western missionaries set up a Presbyterian Church in Ningbo.

During World War II in 1940, Japan bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague.

"It has been said of the Ningbo fishermen that, 'no people in the world apparently made so great an advance in the art of fishing; and for centuries past no people have made so little further progress.'"

China's historical sites, artifacts and archives suffered devastating damage as they were thought to be at the root of “old ways of thinking”. Many artifacts were seized from private homes and museums and often destroyed on the spot. There are no records of exactly how much was destroyed. Western observers suggest that much of China's thousands of years of history was in effect destroyed or, later, smuggled abroad for sale, during the short ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese historians compare the cultural suppression during the Cultural Revolution to Qin Shihuang's great Confucian purge. Religious persecution intensified during this period, because religion was seen as being opposed to Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thinking.[87home]

The status of traditional Chinese culture within China was also severely damaged as a result of the Cultural Revolution. Many traditional customs, such as fortune telling, paper art, feng shui consultations,[90home] wearing traditional Chinese dresses for weddings, the use of the traditional Chinese calendar, scholarship in classical Chinese literature and the practice of referring to the Chinese New Year as the “New Year” rather than the “Spring Festival” have been weakened in mainland China.

Public discussion of the Cultural Revolution is still limited in China. The Chinese government continues to prohibit news organizations from mentioning details of the Cultural Revolution, and online discussions and books about the topic are subject to official scrutiny. Textbooks on the subject continue to abide by the "official view" (see above) of the events.

For a long time, whether in our propaganda [or media] or in our education system, the history of the Cultural Revolution has been avoided

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17987733 The great famine that devastated China half a century ago killed tens of millions of people - but is barely a footnote in history books. By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing