Ningbo is one of China’s oldest cities, with a history dating to the Hemudu culture in 4800 BC. Ningbo was known as a trade city on the silk road at least two thousand years ago, and then as a major port, along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou in the Tang Dynasty; thereafter, the major ports for foreign trade in the Song Dynasty.
It was a well known center of ocean-going commerce with the foreign world.[6] These merchants did not intermingle with native Chinese, practicing their own customs and religion and they inhabited ghettos.