Yínxiàn

Yin County is one of the oldest counties in China, created under the Qin. It took its name from Mount Chijin, and the Guoyu already has Goujian's lands of Yue reaching "east to Yin". For centuries it was the county that held the prefectural seat of Mingzhou, called Qingyuan under the Southern Song and the Yuan and Ningbo under the Ming, where the Yong River meets the Fenghua and Yuyao rivers on the plain between Hangzhou Bay and the sea. From the Tang onward this was a port where ships from Japan put in, and under the Song Arab merchants lived in their own quarter of the town.

In the hills east of the city, Tiantong Temple became one of the Five Mountains of Chan. Dōgen studied under the master Rujing here in the 1220s and carried the Caodong teaching home to found the Sōtō school. In 1523 a brawl between rival Japanese tribute envoys at Ningbo turned into a riot and ended the open trade, and the Portuguese who had traded nearby were driven out in 1548. Fan Qin began the Tianyi Pavilion in 1561 to house the books he had gathered in office, and its rare volumes went to the Siku Quanshu compilation in the 18th century.