Confucius Temple & Qinhuai River

The heart of Nanjing's history and culture: on the site of an Eastern Jin academy, the Temple of King Wenxuan was relocated here in the first Jingyou year of the Northern Song (1034), forming back to back with the Jiangnan Examination Hall a millennium-old 'temple-and-market-as-one' layout. The Jiangnan Examination Hall was ancient China's largest imperial examination venue, able to hold more than 20,000 candidates at its peak, with Mingyuan Tower still standing guard at its center; on its ruins now rises the China Imperial Examination Museum, whose four-story underground 'sunken book-case' design recounts a thousand years of the imperial examinations — breathtaking to behold. When night falls, painted pleasure boats set off from the Pan Pool wharf, gliding past Zhuque Bridge and Wuyi Lane (the former home of the Wang and Xie clans from Liu Yuxi's poem) amid the sound of oars and lantern light — the very scene captured in Zhu Ziqing's and Yu Pingbo's essays of the same title, 'The Qinhuai River in the Sound of Oars and the Shadow of Lanterns'; Bailuzhou Park and the Confucius Temple shopping district lantern fair (its Spring Festival lantern fair is nationally famous) offer two different ways to enjoy the area, by day and by night.

Getting there: Metro Line 3, Fuzimiao Station