Zhenjiang's Xijindu on foot: the ferry crossing the Yangtze walked away from

The Yangtze used to stop here. Xijindu (西津渡, xī jīn dù) was the point where Grand Canal traffic transferred to river boats, and for something close to a thousand years the street existed to serve people waiting to cross. The channel has since shifted roughly a kilometre north, which leaves the lane standing on dry ground with all its infrastructure for departure still in place.

A street built for leaving

The first thing your legs register is that the street climbs. Stone paving near the lower end carries grooves worn by cart wheels, deep enough to catch a shoe, and the buildings step upward in the two-storey brick-and-timber pattern of a working port rather than a preserved one. Halfway up, a white stone stupa straddles the lane: the Zhaoguan stone stupa (昭关石塔, zhāo guān shí tǎ), Yuan dynasty, built so that travellers passed beneath it on the way down to the boats. You walk through it, not around it, which is rarer than it sounds.

Above the stupa sits the Daiduting (待渡亭, dài dù tíng), the pavilion where people waited for a ferry. It now looks out over rooftops, a road, and the backs of apartment blocks. Give the first three hundred metres forty minutes; the interest is in signage, doorframes and the height you gain, none of which rewards a fast pace.

A street organised entirely around departure, still standing after the departures stopped.

The hill that still has the river

From the top of Xijindu, Beigushan (北固山, běi gù shān) is about twenty-five minutes on foot through ordinary residential streets, and the approach is half the point. Inside the park gate the path passes Ganlu Temple (甘露寺, gān lù sì) and an iron pagoda whose lower storeys are genuinely old, then opens onto a terrace above the water: the Yangtze wide, silt-brown, and worked hard by barge traffic. This is the river the ferry street lost.

A bowl at the end

Zhenjiang exports vinegar and noodles, and the two arrive together. Guogai mian (锅盖面, guō gài miàn), pot-lid noodles, are cooked in a broad pot with a small wooden lid floating directly on the water; the shops clustered near the foot of Xijindu serve them in soy broth with the topping laid on at the end. The vinegar on the table is local, dark and faintly sweet. Several of the older places pull their shutters down in the mid-afternoon, so plan the walk downhill rather than up.

长江北移之后，西津渡的石阶依旧在，只是再没有船可等。