Nanjing Fuzimiao

A Confucian temple and living quarter, Nanjing Fuzimiao stands on the banks of the Qinhuai River in the south of the old city, a complex that has served for centuries as both a place of scholarly veneration and the beating social heart of Nanjing. The temple honours Confucius, but the name today conjures an entire riverside district of halls, bridges, markets and teahouses that spill out around it.

Scholarship shaped the site. Beside the temple stood the Jiangnan Examination Hall, the largest imperial civil-service testing ground in the country, where generations of candidates sat the gruelling exams that could lift a family's fortunes. That association filled the surrounding streets with bookshops, lodgings and pleasure quarters, and the intellectual and worldly life of imperial Nanjing was concentrated here along the Qinhuai.

It is at its most magical after dark. The temple and the riverbanks are strung with lanterns, and pleasure boats drift along the Qinhuai past illuminated pavilions, a scene that reaches its peak during the Lunar New Year lantern festival, one of the oldest and most famous in China. By day the lanes brim with snack stalls serving Nanjing specialities, from duck-blood soup to sweet dumplings.

For visitors, wandering the district is free, though the temple halls and the examination-hall museum charge modest fees. It is a compact, walkable area well served by metro, and works equally well as an evening stroll or a daytime browse. Expect dense crowds at weekends and holidays; an early evening arrival lets you enjoy both the lantern light and the food stalls before the peak, and a short boat ride on the river adds the classic Qinhuai perspective. Between the temple, the food and the lantern-lit river, it captures the pleasures of old Nanjing in a single quarter.