Shanghai to Ningbo High-Speed Rail: A Coastal China Journey

Join me and family on a trip from Hongqiao, Shanghai to Ningbo on China high speed trains during the Labour day holiday. Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeast Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the East China Sea. Ningbo is the southern economic center of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis. The port of Ningbo–Zhoushan, spread across several locations, is the world's busiest port by cargo tonnage and world's third-busiest container port since 2010.

Ningbo is the core city and center of the Ningbo Metropolitan Area. To the north, Hangzhou Bay separates Ningbo from Shanghai; to the east lies Zhoushan in the East China Sea; on the west and south, Ningbo borders Shaoxing and Taizhou respectively. As of the 2020 Chinese national census the entire administrated area of Ningbo City had a population of 9.4 million (9,404,283).

Ningbo is one of the 15 sub-provincial cities in China, and is one of the five separate state-planning cities in China (the other four being Dalian, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Shenzhen), with the municipality possessing a separate state-planning status in many economic departments, rather than being governed by Zhejiang Province. Therefore, Ningbo has provincial-level autonomy in making economic and financial policies.

In 2022, the GDP of Ningbo was CNY 1570,43 billion (US$233.479 billion), and it was ranked 12th among 293 cities in China. Moreover, Ningbo is among the wealthiest cities in China; it ranked 8th in terms of average yearly disposable income in the year of 2020. As of 2020, Ningbo has global headquarters and registered offices of over 100 listed companies, and many regional business headquarters. In 2021, Ningbo featured the seventh most listed companies of all cities in China.