Fenghua

Fenghua is primarily known internationally as the birthplace of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), the Nationalist leader who governed mainland China from 1928 to 1949 and the Republic of China on Taiwan until his death in 1975. The town of Xikou, 20 kilometres southwest of Fenghua, was the Chiang family village — a prosperous Zhejiang merchant family's home community — and preserves the ancestral hall, family residence, and associated buildings of the Chiang estate.

The Xikou heritage complex covers several connected structures: the Feng Hao House (the family residence where Chiang was born in 1887), the Wenchang Pavilion, and the Mingde School where Chiang received his early education. The complex also includes the Mao'en Pagoda built by Chiang in memory of his mother. The town itself is a compact Qing-era river-town with the Sheng River running through its centre.

Xuedou Mountain, rising to 800 metres above Fenghua, is the site of the Xuedou Monastery — one of China's five sacred Buddhist mountain monasteries in the Chan tradition. The monastery has a documented history from the Tang dynasty; the current buildings are a mix of Ming, Qing, and 20th-century construction. A large seated Maitreya Buddha (the Laughing Buddha of Chinese popular Buddhism) installed on the mountainside in 1994 is one of the larger outdoor Buddha figures in the Zhejiang region.

The Xuedou Mountain hiking trails through bamboo forest and past a series of waterfalls offer the most substantive natural landscape in the greater Ningbo area.