Sanjiangkou

Sanjiangkou — the Three Rivers Mouth — is the geographic and commercial heart of old Ningbo, the point where the Yuyao River and Fenghua River meet to form the Yong River before flowing east to Zhenhai and the sea. The confluence has been the focus of Ningbo's commercial life since the Tang dynasty, when Ningbo (then called Mingzhou) was one of China's three principal foreign-trade ports alongside Guangzhou and Quanzhou.

The old Ningbo Bund (Lao Bund or Waitan), on the south bank of the Yong River below the confluence, preserves a collection of late-Qing and Republican-era banking and trading buildings — a smaller but structurally similar collection to the better-known Shanghai Bund. The buildings represent the headquarters of foreign banks (HSBC, Chartered, Yokohama Specie Bank) and the comprador trading houses that managed Ningbo's export trade in silk, cotton, and craft goods.

The former foreign concession streets, on the north bank above the confluence, retain their 19th-century layout and a mix of surviving and reconstructed heritage buildings. The area is less thoroughly commercialised than the formal Bund section and gives a clearer sense of the original residential-commercial fabric.

The Drum Tower (Gulou), a reconstructed landmark at the north end of the old town's main axis, marks the ceremonial entrance to the Qing county administrative compound. The current structure is a 1980s reconstruction in a Tang-revival style; the scale and position are historically accurate.