Ningbo part one

The potential of the area is so huge that the city government plans to invest ten billion Yuan RMB, or over 1 billion US dollars in the following five years to revamp it into a recreational resort.

It鈥檚 not kayaking, but rowing a boat on Dongqian lake offers a completely different type of fun, an oriental way to release the pressure of city life and get close to the Nature.

The lake is also surrounded by many cultural relics - the stone sculptures of Southern Song Dynasty is one of them.

Since Song Dynasty, many powerful and wealthy families in the area chose to build their tombs among the hills by the lake for the good Fengshui, leaving many cultural relics.

Altogether you can find five pairs of stone sculptures in front of the tombs of those high-ranking officials from Southern Song Dynasty. And horse is one of them. It represents loyalty. And if you look closely, you can tell the sex of this horse from the decorative patterns on this saddle.

Because of the short lifespan of Southern Song Dynasty, the stone sculptures of Dong Qian Lake are extremely valuable for its rarity. The unique style is a combination of the North and the South since Southern Song dynasty was driven from North China to south of Yangtze River by northern nomads.

In addition to horses, the other four pairs of the sculptures along the passage leading to the tomb are civil officials, military officers, tigers and sheep.

Although Ningbo is always considered the birthplace of the Chinese modern businessmen, the idea of romance is not foreign to this land, actually, the greatest love story in Chinese history, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, started from this beautiful place.