Moon Lake (Yuehu) in the old city's western quarter is Ningbo's oldest urban park, a crescent-shaped freshwater lake that has been a gathering place for scholars, poets, and officials since the Tang dynasty. The lake and its surrounding gardens were extensively developed during the Song and have been rebuilt, replanted, and refined through every subsequent dynasty. The surrounding district contains several historic buildings and stone bridges, and the whole area has a settled, literary character quite different from the commercial Laowaitan waterfront.
The park is largely used by local residents — elderly men playing chess under the willows, walkers doing their morning exercise, children feeding the carp in the shallower sections — and has an unremarkable but genuine daily-life quality. Several small temples and memorial halls on the park's banks are worth visiting for the stone inscriptions and carved woodwork they contain. The Tianyi Ge library is a ten-minute walk away, and the two sites make a natural morning circuit through the old city's western district.