The Temple of Town God of Ningbo, first constructed in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), is one of the best preserved and largest city god temples in China. A historic landmark and pride of place in the harbor city in eastern Zhejiang, the temple has witnessed the city’s cultural and material prosperity. Now under a refurbishment project since October 2018, the temple is expected to reopen soon if and when the Covid-19 pandemic is under tight control.

Though the faith in the town god can go back to a long time ago, town god temples mushroomed in the Ming Dynasty after Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the dynasty, decided to enhance the status of the town god in the country in a bid to maintain law and order in the newly founded dynasty. Inside the city of Ningbo, there were town god temples at the prefecture and county levels. Moreover, all the coast guard garrison towns along the coastline of Ningbo had their own town-god temples. Some of these temples have remained. 

An ancient map of Ningbo indicates that there were as many as 20 plus town god temples across Ningbo at the time the map was made. A prefecture, Ningbo had its own town god temple, which remains today. However, as the prefecture government was located in Yinxian County, the county’s town-god temple stood only about 200 meters away from the prefecture’s counterpart. The county’s town-god temple disappeared not a long time ago, replaced by a stately building. The only mementos that indicate the glory of the lost temple are eight stone steles now embedded in the back wall of the building. The steles are from the disappeared town god temple of Yinxian County.

For a long time, the town-god temple of Ningbo served as a huge entertainment and shopping center of the city. Architecturally, the structure is a showcase of woodcarving in red and gold, a well-known craft of Ningbo. The temple features a great number of such woodcarvings covered with gold foils on the reddish background. There is a theater stage inside the temple. Open to the public, the theater is a venue for performances in honor of the town god. Plays of various regional opera genres are performed there. Story-telling is also a popular public entertainment at the temple. The temple theater boasts three kinds of story-telling styles. One is relatively quiet, especially appropriate for romances. Another story-telling format is appropriate for stories about heroes who vanquish evils and bad guys and help the disadvantaged people. The temple was a center of folk entertainment and this part of the entertainment is expected to continue.

For some people, the town god temple of Ningbo was a paradise for gourmets. All kinds of local delicacies were available to pilgrims, tourists, and other visitors. Foodies were pleased especially with temple fairs when there were all kinds of food provided. In the 1980s, the temple went under a reconstruction and a large food court was set up on the compound and a row of shops flanked the either side of the food court. In the memory of many people of today, the town-god temple was where you went shopping and enjoyed local delicacies. But experts and scholars disliked the food court and shops inside the temple. So in the refurbishment project started in October 2018, all the food stalls and shops were relocated to buildings around the temple. There will be no food court and shops inside the temple after the reopening. The idea behind the new arrangement is: let the temple remain what it was before the modern times.

Ningbo in ancient times was an important port city for international trade. It was especially important for the commercial and cultural ties between China and Japan. Sakugen Shūryō (1501–1579), a Japanese monk who visited China twice as a diplomatic emissary, came to Ningbo in his first journey to China on June 25, 1539. The monk visited the town-god temple in Ningbo and paid homage to the town god. He mentioned three town-god temples respectively in Ningbo, Huai’an and Beijing in his travelogue on his first visit to China. Apparently, he crossed the sea and landed at Ningbo and traveled northward on the Grand Canal.

Oka Senjin (1833-1914), a prominent Japanese sinologist, spent a year in 1884 traveling through China and met with over 200 Chinese government officials, business tycoons and scholars including Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong and Sheng Xuanhuai. He kept a diary on his adventure in China. One entry dated July 29, 1884 is about his visit to the town-god temple of Ningbo. Oka Senjin visited two town-god temples in Ningbo and ascended the Tianfeng Pagoda, the tallest structure in Ningbo of that time. The Japanese visitor was deeply impressed by the grandiose of Ningbo’s town-god temple and by the hustle and bustle of the theater, but felt sorry that the sight of some gamblers there was a killjoy.

Aoki Masaru (1887-1964) mentioned the theater stage on the compound of the town-god temple of Ningbo in A History of Modern Chinese Theater , a book he authored. He said the theater stage was perched on the tallest foundation he had ever seen.