Tian Yi Ge, Ancient library and garden in Ningbo, China.

Tian Yi Ge is a traditional library and garden complex in Ningbo featuring a two-story wooden building with a slanted roof. Stone pathways and water features wind through the grounds, creating a classical Chinese garden layout around the main structure.

Fan Qin, a Ming vice minister of war, built Tianyi Ge between 1561 and 1566 to house his library of over 70,000 volumes. In 1773 his eighth-generation descendant Fan Maozhu submitted 641 rare titles to the Qianlong Emperor's Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, and the emperor had the library's plan copied for the Wenyuan, Wensu, Wenjin and other imperial libraries. British troops looted geographical works in 1841, and by 1949 only about 13,000 volumes remained; donations later raised the collection to some 300,000 volumes.

The name comes from a line in a Han-dynasty commentary on the Book of Changes, "tian yi sheng shui, di liu cheng zhi" (Heaven generates water; Earth completes it with six). Fan Qin gave the library a water-linked name and built a pond in front of it to ward off fire. The building itself follows the same scheme: one room upstairs, six rooms below.

Tianyi Ge stands on Yuehu West Street, west of Moon Lake in Ningbo's old city, and is entered from the south. It closes on Monday mornings except public holidays, when it opens at 1:30 PM; Tuesday to Sunday hours are 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. The complex takes in the West, South and East gardens.

The library holds the only complete run of Ming dynasty jinshi examination records, from the first session of 1371 to the 52nd session of 1583. Its 370 kinds of examination lists make up more than 80 percent of all such documents surviving today.