Baoguo Temple in the hills northwest of Ningbo city contains the oldest surviving wooden building in southern China — a main hall built in 1013 CE that has stood for over a millennium through floods, earthquakes, and the various upheavals of Chinese history. The temple was founded in the Eastern Han dynasty, but the current main hall dates from the Song, and its construction method — entirely mortise-and-tenon joinery without nails or metal fasteners — is considered a masterwork of traditional Chinese carpentry.
The temple is set in a wooded valley about fifteen kilometres from the city centre, and the approach through old camphor trees gives a sense of the original seclusion. The building itself is modest from the outside — a low, wide hall with sweeping eaves — but the interior shows the extraordinary complexity of the dougong bracket system holding up the roof. Several smaller halls and pagodas on the grounds date from later periods, and the overall setting, with its ancient trees and stone inscriptions, makes the journey worthwhile.