With courtesy to Jon Sims, please find the below story about his way to see and travel China. He is a long time ready of NingboLife and plays an active part in Ningbo expat community. NingboLife would be glad, if this story would encourage you to write your story, we will "print" it and thousand viewers will read it... not only in Ningbo

By Jon Sims, Ningbo

I bought this Suzuki 400 (pit pike) motard on a whim, as you do. I didn’t like the 17” front wheel so I put a real off road 21” rim on it. Took it into 

the mountains to play and realised the gearing was way too high for off road and seating position was way too high.. Very easy to fall over. It has a top speed of around 140kmh and it was then I realised what I had.. A tough little machine ideal for cruising Chinese roads. So… Change the knobblies to road tires, make some panniers, mounting brackets and a rack for the top box and voila! Probably the most ideal dual purpose machine for Chinese roads. As it was time was against me and a 6,000Km round trip to Kunming was out of the question. The wee baby needed testing on something a little less demanding. A 2,000Km trip around Qiandao Lake and Huangshan would be good. Because this is China there is little difference between off road and the main highways, apart from the speed. Frankly speaking the main highways were probably more of a shakedown than any off road excursions.

 The drive from Ningbo to Jiande town where the trip starts is not interesting. In fact it is incredibly boring. 

Not only that it is incredibly dangerous. The rule of the road here is “there are no rules”.. Accidents are everywhere with Pedestrians, Electric Bikers, Cyclists and this ilk totally devoid of any responsibility at all. If they cause an accident it is your fault as you have a driving license and insurance. It sucks and it is stupid and it will change sometime in the future and knowing this GVT it will change very quickly when it does. Until then it’s stupid and the best thing you can be is incredibly vigilant. However, politics aside, my intention was to drive around the south side of Thousand Island Lake, around the corner up to Huangshan city and then back home via the north side of the lake. I had done the north side before as well as Huangshan. A country lane from Huangshan winds up through the mountains to descend rapidly to a village called Jie Kou. In English this means “mouth of the road”.  The number designated to this road by the Anhui Province is X001. I’m sure if you asked someone in the know they would be able to tell you why. Apart from this the ride is spectacular and there is wild honey to be had at the township!

The journey really began at Jiande, a town on the banks of the Xinan river, a tributary of the Qian Tang River which flows into Hangzhou bay, which has an annual bore wave to match the mighty Amazon. It is supposed to be an amazing site. Being a surfer, I can’t get excited about this and after 17 years here have still to get off my lardy arse to drive the 100Km or so from home to watch it. 

But Jiande is pretty, sitting in the river valley astride the Xinan, steep cliffs clad in green bush, reflected in the limpid silkiness of the deep still water.. Blah blah blah. It’s nice actually. At this time of year it’s very crowded and very expensive. So driving the south river road, passing tripper boats on their way to the dam which creates Qian Dao Lake and the endless mineral water factories (one of which is called WAHAHA… (laughing all the way to the bank!!!), I cruised onward into the baixia line road which wends around the south side of Qiandao.  

The first thing I found surprising about this was the road immediately wound mountainwards. This was not surprising per se but the traffic jam was. One reason for liking motorcycles was the word Jam only applies to the prefix ; toast and….;

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Morning exercise

In the fragrance of osmanthus flowers the people are enjoying the morning exercises

Export of vegetables to USA on rise

This year, Ningbo's export of vegetables to the market of USA is on the rise.

Wharf for largest container ships under construction in Ningbo

The berths for the largest container ships in Meishan are in shape.

The first phase of the wharf for container ships has five berths and the designed annual capacity is 3 million standard containers every. The No.1 and No.2 berths were completed and put into operation in August 2010. The berths No.3, 4 and 5 are jointly ventured and managed by Ningbo Port Co., Ltd. and Maersk.

The berths No.3, 4 and 5 are 17.8 meters in harbor depth. The construction of the berths started on August 16, 2011. They are capable of the berthing of 18,000-standard-container ships. 18,000-standard-container ships are at present the largest containers ships in the world that are under construction. These ships, being built for Maersk, will be launched in 2013. At present there are few wharfs that are capable of the berthing of such large ships.

The berth facilities will be completed and put into operation in two years

Ningbo is China's largest production base of clothes

According to Ningbo Municipal Economic Information Commission, Ningbo at present has over 3,000 producers of various clothes, producing about 1.5 billion clothes every year, covering over 13% of the total production of China. Ningbo is now China's largest production base of clothes, the largest base of clothes brands and the largest base for clothes export. It has 26 China Well-known Trademarks and 20 Chinese Brand Names including Youngor, Firs, Romon, TONLION, Rouse, Peacebird and Progen.

On the list of 2010-2011 Top 500 China Textile and Clothes Enterprises there are Ningbo enterprises like Shenzhou, Youngor, Veken, Beyond, Zhongxin, Bridge, Kanger, Yongnan, Aiyimei, Seduno and Sanbang.

The clothes industry is a name card of Ningbo. It is No.1 in China for its comprehensive strength. It has China's largest producers of suits and shirts and it is the most powerful and influential in China for its three industries of clothes, knitwear and household textiles.

In the last year, the total industrial output value made by the large clothes enterprises amounted to 124 billion yuan, increased by 3.3% year on year. An initial estimation shows that Ningbo has 2.4 large clothes enterprises (those whose income of the primary business is above 20 million yuan a year) and the total income reaches 19.424 billion yuan, up by 9.06% year on year. In the last year, economic returns of the clothes enterprises kept increasing, with the profit totaling 1.989 billion yuan, increased by 11.6% above the same period of the previous year.

In the circle of clothes industry, Ningbo International Fashion Festival is very influential, thanks to the powerful clothes producing groups. The 16th Ningbo International Fashion Fair is to open from 25 to 28 in October.

600,000 aged people enjoy home-based caring servic

According to Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs,by the end of last year, 600,000 aged people in urban and rural areas enjoyed various home-based caring services; over 90% of the communities and 43% of the administrative villages offer home-based caring services; 269 communities and 1146 villages have home-based caring service stations; Ningbo has over 2,100 full-time and spare-time nurses for the aged, whose services cover physical care, household services, nursing, entertainment and so on. Some home-based aging service centers have dining halls for the aged. All the home-based caring service centers are non-profitable and they are financed by the governments or the village.

In September this year, Ningbo released "Opinions on Improving Social Old Age Service System", which has several policies in favor of home-based old age caring services. With this document, Ningbo took the lead in China to establish a system of subsidies for the operation of home-based old-age caring institutions.

Before other cities in China, Ningbo established a system that the government pays for the home-based caring services for the poverty-stricken aged people. At present, Ningbo has over 7,000 poverty-stricken aged people enjoying the caring services paid by the government or the village. The 81890 service platform offers 24-hour sos services for the aged people by the telephones installed for free for some of the aged people. At present, the city has over 20,000 aged people benefitted by the policy. Ningbo now has about 30,000 volunteers and over 60,000 aged people get one-to-one services by the volunteers

3rd China Ningbo International Port Cultural Festival to open

According to the Organizing Committee of China Ningbo International Port Cultural Festival, the 3rd China Ningbo International Port Cultural Festival will open from October 26 to 18 in Beilun.

The festival is jointly hosted by International City and Port Association, China Port Association and Ningbo Municipal Government and undertaken by Beilun District Government and the Administrative Committee of Ningbo Economic & Technical Development Zone. Themed on "exciting port city and merry mood", the festival will have 6 kinds of activities in culture, tourism and fine food. Over 500 people will be invited to the festival, including representatives from international port cities, foreign ambassadors to China, representatives from famous port cities home and abroad and those from shipping business

Yinzhou gained 571 million yuan in National Day festival week

Statistics show that in the 8 festival holidays, the number of tourists the major scenic spots in Yinzhou received amounts to 942,400, 30.47% more than the same period in the previous year; and the income from tourism totals 571 million yuan, making new highs in both the total of tourists and the total of income.

On October 1, the district over 20,000 cars of self driving tourists, and this number covers 70% of the total of tourists going to the scenic spots. The occupancy rate of hotels is over 80%.

In the first three days during the National Day holiday week, self driving travelers swarmed to such scenic spots as Wulongtan, Tiantong Temple, Ningbo Museum, Tiangong Fazenda and Qinshuiwan Farmers' Inn. On October 2 alone, Tiantong Scenic Spot received about 10,000 cars of self drivers, some coming from Jiangsu, Shanghai, Fujian and even from Shandong.

Thanks to the policy support, Yinzhou has 20 museums that open for free to tourists. During the National Day festival holiday week, Ningbo (Yinzhou) Museum hosted the Exhibition of China Photoxylographical Printing Works and the exhibition of dinosaurs together with interactive activities. Ningbo Clothes Museum and and the Zizhufang Arts Gallery had continuous streams of visitors.

Statistics show that in the eight days, Ningbo (Yinzhou) Museum received 72,2000 visitors. Wanda Plaza had 88,000 visitors, with the business income reaching about 100 million yuan.

In the week, the farmers' inns in the district received 86,000 tourists.

The old revolutionary bases were favored by a large number of tourists. According to incomplete statistics, the revolutionary bases like Siming Mountain Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs and others received 50,000 visitors

Ningbo to strengthen social management

The other day, Ningbo Municipal Party Committee and Ningbo Municipal Government jointly issued "Outline for Strengthening and Innovation of Social Management of Ningbo 2012-2016", an complete plan for the coming five years for the social and economic development and social management in eight fields. This is the first plan Ningbo has made for the strengthening and innovation of social management.

As one of the pilot cities committed to innovation of social administration, Ningbo in recent years has made integrated plans to promote the innovation of social management. Now, Ningbo has established a perfect social management system, a social management network and a mechanism that is featured for the leadership of the party, the responsibility of the government, and the social participation.

The plan involves 8 fields and puts forwards 8 goals: to optimize the foundation for economic and social development, to optimize the management institution for grass-roots social management, to optimize population service and management, to optimize the supervisory system of public security, to optimize the mechanism for mediating and settling social conflicts and disputes, to optimize the management of the "two organizations", to optimize the supervisory system for information network, and to optimize the humanistic environment for social management. The plan also contains 48 main indicators for the innovation of social management. According to the plan, from 2012 to 2016, Ningbo will start the construction of 10 municipal-level medical institutions; the coverage of direct election of the neighborhood community committee will be extended; a service center for volunteers will be established; a reformatory school will be founded established; the increase of automobiles will be under control and public traffic will be improved; a center for mediating and settling social conflicts and disputes will be set up by integrating existing resources; the financing for social construction and social management will be gradually increased

Sales in shopping malls and supermarkets dropped

With the fine weather these days, the number of citizens conducting out of town traveling began to increase significantly, leading to the drop of sales in shopping malls and supermarkets. On October 2, the sales volume in the 11 large-scale shopping malls under monitoring stood at 53.513 million yuan, down by 18.9% over the same period last year.

The increase of traveling citizens had a bigger impact on the sales in supermarkets. The sales volume of the eight large-scale supermarkets under holiday monitoring stood at 42.109 million yuan, declined significantly compared with the previous days.

Eco-tourism in Beilun well received

"Local visitors can have free access to Jiufeng Mountain Scenic Spot and the tickets for outside tourists are only 20 yuan." "The view is fabulous along the 100-kilometer free-access footpath." "The low travel cost makes it affordable to travel in Beilun District." These are just some of the comments by tourists on the local online forum and microblogs, speaking highly of the low-expenditure eco-tourism in Beilun District.

"In the first three days of the holiday, the total passenger volume by the public traffic system reached over 210,000, up by 30% over the same period last year. Last year, the tourists focused on the golden traveling line of 'Fenghuang Mountain-Jiufeng Mountain-Yangsha Mountain', and this year, the tourists poured to almost all the corners of the central eco-zone with an area of 100 square kilometers." said Su Shengwei, Deputy General Manager of Beilun Public Transportation Company, who has been paying attention to the tourist distribution and the command and adjustment of vehicles the past few days. Different from the previous years, besides the tourism in the traditional mountain areas, the tourists to the green landscape and leisure zones in the downtown area and to the shopping malls also exploded.

Such hot spots as Fenghuang Mountain Amusement Park and the downtown Central Square were crowded with tourists. "In this holiday, by taking a walk under the green street trees and in the parks full of osmanthus fragrance, people can enjoy a green life even in the downtown area without having to go to the mountain areas." "Eco-green" is becoming a new feature of Beilun District.

In the past few years, Beilun District has made great efforts to achieve the "green transformation" by investing over two billion yuan in building "forest Beilun". So far, the forest coverage rate in the district has reached 45.9%, and the coverage rate in the urban area has reached 35.2%.

"We are now in the harvest period for our livelihood traveling." said an official from Beilun District Tourism Burea. Taking into consideration the demand for outdoor space proposed by the urban development of Ningbo, Beilun District is making full use of its green transformation and rich eco-resources to accelerate the transformation of urban green space facilities and develop the balanced eco-tourism pattern covering both urban and mountainous areas

Ningbo received 393,500 tourists on September 3

As the first day of the Golden week and the first day of the holiday for free passage of private cars, September 30 witnessed many citizens conduct self-driving tours. The traffic pressure around Ningbo was not very heavy and everything was in order in all the major scenic areas in Ningbo.

The number of tourists to such hot scenic areas as Xikou Scenic Spot, Fenghuang Mountain Amusement Park, Dapeng Mount Tourist Resort, Cicheng Ancient town, Dongqian Lake Tourist resort and Ningbo Ocean World saw a slight increase, with tourists mainly coming from the nearby areas in Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province and Shanghai in self-driving tours organized by family, friends or self-driving clubs. The number of tourists to the Old Bund and Baoguo Temple in Jiangbei District and Haitian Island almost doubled that of usual days.

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