Xiaguan and the Yangtze: the Bridge, Yuejiang Tower and Pukou Station

For an English-speaking visitor this is where the First Opium War ended - or nearly. In August 1842, with British warships anchored off Xiaguan, Qing envoys met the British at this temple and negotiated the Treaty of Nanking here over four sessions inside the temple; the treaty itself was signed on 29 August aboard HMS Cornwallis on the river, and it ceded Hong Kong Island. The temple had been built in 1411 by the Yongle Emperor to honour Zheng He's voyages. It burned in 1937, leaving eight monks' rooms; what you see was rebuilt from 1987, opened as the Treaty of Nanking historical museum in 1990, enlarged in 1996 for the Hong Kong handover - hence the 'warning bell' cast that year - and again in 2004. Free, closed Mondays, and no booking is needed.

The double-decker road-and-rail bridge that opened in December 1968 - trains below, traffic above - and the subject of a school-textbook passage that generations of Chinese children learned by heart. Its railway operator describes it as a bridge China designed and built itself in the 1960s, begun in January 1960; the 70-metre bridgehead towers carry 'three red flags' on top, and the smaller towers carry statue groups of workers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants. What you can do today is narrower than most guides say. The Bridge Park under the south tower - and the lift up the tower that guides still price at 15 yuan - has been closed for railway-safety reasons, and in spring 2026 the railway bureau put a redesign of the park out to tender. The easy way to see the bridge now is from below: a free glass-floored footbridge opened in 2022 over the Jinchuan River mouth just south of the tower, or from the Pukou ferry.

The best 2 yuan you will spend in Nanjing: a city-bus-priced ferry straight across the Yangtze from Zhongshan Wharf in Xiaguan to Pukou Wharf, which is a short walk from the old Pukou railway terminus. Before the 1968 bridge, travellers from the north got off the train at Pukou and crossed the river here; the wharf took its present name from Sun Yat-sen's coffin, which crossed here in 1929 on its way to the mausoleum. Today it is still a commuter line - two boats shuttling between the piers, every 20-30 minutes - and a cheap way to be on the river with the 1968 bridge in view downstream. Fares are set in the city price handbook: 2 yuan, or 1 yuan with a Nanjing transit card.

The museum of the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign of April 1949 and the taking of Nanjing on 23 April 1949. It is a branch of the Nanjing Municipal Museum. It opened in 1984 in the tower of Yijiang Gate; the present building at Sanchahe, on the riverbank about 2.4 km south-west of Jinghai Temple, opened on 23 April 2009 and reopened in July 2021 after renovation. The permanent exhibition is titled 'Heaven and Earth Overturned - the Victory of the Crossing Campaign and the Liberation of Nanjing'. The main hall is faced in red stone and from a distance looks like a wooden boat; in the square, the tallest of the red columns of the 'thousand sails' sculpture is 49.423 metres long, standing for 23 April 1949. Free; closed Mondays except public holidays.

The southern terminus of the Tianjin-Pukou railway, opened in 1914 on the north bank of the Yangtze, where passengers from Beijing got off the train and took the boat across to Nanjing. It is the station in Zhu Ziqing's essay 'The Sight of Father's Back' - the father clambering over the tracks and up the platform to buy oranges - which is why many Chinese visitors come. The station went quiet after the 1968 bridge let trains cross the river, carried passengers again from 1985 as 'Nanjing North', and stopped passenger service in 2004. It became a national heritage site in 2013; in October 2024 a restored street quarter opened around it, with the waiting hall, platforms, ticket office and wharf kept, and bookshops, cafés and shops moved in. Treat it as a heritage street, not a working station: the name 'Pukou Station' came back in May 2026, but we have found no sign of passenger trains returning.

A temple to Tianfei - the sea goddess better known in southern China as Mazu - founded by imperial order in 1407, after Zheng He came back from the first of his voyages to the Indian Ocean; the Yongle Emperor credited her with the fleet's safe return. It once had 79 halls and rooms; it was wrecked after the 1850s and destroyed completely in the winter of 1937. What you walk through now was rebuilt for the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyages, begun at the end of 2004 and opened in May 2005. It shares a wall with Jinghai Temple, and the one piece of the Ming temple that survived - its stele - now stands on the Jinghai side. Free, 08:00-17:30.

A small free riverside park at Laojiangkou built around the thing that came before the bridge: the 1933 railway ferry, which carried whole trains across the Yangtze between the Tianjin-Pukou and Shanghai-Nanjing lines. The old trestle still runs its two rails down towards the water; beside it sit a black-and-red steam locomotive, three green passenger carriages, a mock-Republican waiting hall and platform and a 'Nanjing West - Beijing' station sign. Since 2022 some of the buildings have been let as a bookshop, tea room and art space. Pair it with Pukou Station across the river - the trains that reached Pukou were ferried over to this bank. It is not the old Nanjing West station building, which stands separately on Longjiang Road and is still railway land.

The city gate that joins the river quarter to the old city. It is not a Ming gate: the Ming wall was cut here in the early Republic to open a road from the Xiaguan docks and railway station into town, first as a single arch called Hailing Gate. It was renamed Yijiang ('drawing in the river') in 1928, and in 1929 rebuilt with three arches - the first three-arched gate in Nanjing's wall - so that Sun Yat-sen's funeral procession could pass on the new avenue from Zhongshan Wharf to the mausoleum; that avenue is today's Zhongshan North Road. On 23 April 1949 the People's Liberation Army entered the city through it, and from 1984 to 2009 its tower held the Crossing-the-River Victory Memorial. The wall on both sides is one of Nanjing's free climbing points.

A tower that was written before it was built. In 1374 the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, renamed this hill Lion Hill, wrote an essay called 'A Record of the River-Viewing Tower' and ordered his scholars to write their own; foundations were laid, and then the tower was never finished. It went up in September 2001: 52 metres, seven storeys, an L-shaped plan with one wing facing north and one west, so both look out over the Yangtze. This is the Ming layer of Nanjing as an idea rather than as fabric - what you climb is concrete from 2001. The view is the point: the river, the 1968 bridge downstream and the city behind. Tickets are 40 yuan; the lift up the hill and the escalator on the east side cost extra.