East of Hangzhou, the Grand Canal does not simply stop. A further waterway, the Zhedong Canal, carries on across the coastal plain of eastern Zhejiang through Shaoxing and Yuyao to Ningbo and the sea, linking the inland canal system to one of China's great ports. This point sits on the Ningbo section, in a flat, intensely worked landscape of rivers, locks, villages and factories between Yuyao and the city.
Ningbo's place in history comes from that link. For more than a thousand years, goods carried down the canal from the interior were loaded here onto ships bound for Japan, Korea and South-east Asia, and the city became one of the starting points of what is now called the Maritime Silk Road. The heart of the old port is Sanjiangkou, the Three Rivers Mouth, where the Yao and Fenghua rivers meet to form the Yong, which flows on to the East China Sea. The Tianyi Pavilion in the city centre, built in the sixteenth century, is one of the oldest surviving private libraries in Asia.
The plain around here is old as well as busy. Near Yuyao lies Hemudu, the site of a Neolithic culture some seven thousand years old, where archaeologists found some of the earliest evidence of rice farming, along with wooden houses on piles and lacquered bowls. Yuyao is also the home town of Wang Yangming, the Ming philosopher whose ideas about the unity of knowledge and action are still studied across East Asia.
Be realistic about the riding. This is one of the most densely built parts of China, with expressways, ring roads, industrial zones and heavy traffic, and riding a foreign motorcycle here requires permits, a local licence or temporary permit and usually a guide. Many cities, Ningbo among them, restrict motorcycles in urban areas. The pleasant riding is south of the plain, in the green hills of Siming Shan and towards Fenghua, where roads climb through bamboo forests and tea gardens to small mountain villages.
Ningbo is a large city with every service. Yuyao, closer to this point, is a sizeable town in its own right. In season, Yuyao is famous for its yangmei, red bayberries, sold in mountains by the roadside in June, and Ningbo's tangyuan, sweet glutinous rice balls filled with black sesame paste, are known across China.