Ning-po

Ning-po, a treaty-port of the Chinese province of Che-keang, stands in a fertile plain, 16 miles from the mouth of the Takia (Ning-po) River and about 100 miles S. of Shanghai. It is surrounded by a wall 25 feet high and 16 feet thick, and contains numerous temples, colleges, &c., chief amongst them the temple of the Queen of Heaven, figured under CHINA (Vol. III. p. 187); the temple was founded in the 12th century, but the present building, elaborately and richly ornamented, dates from 1680. The people, 250,000 in number, make sedge hats and mats, grow cotton, catch cuttle-fish, and carry on an active trade, especially in the export of green tea. The customs returns show the annual value of the imports—chiefly opium (30 per cent. of the total), cotton and woollen goods, tin and iron, medicines (in transit), dried lungnangs, kerosene oil, indigo, sugar, and tobacco—to be £1,887,900, and the exports—green tea (70 per cent. of the total), cuttle-fish, sedge hats and mats, silk goods, and raw cotton—to be £1,259,300. Apart from junks, some 550 vessels, of 382,800 tons, enter every year, of which 158 vessels, with an aggregate of 127,900 tons, are British.