Tianyi Mansion is the most ancient private library for housing ancient books and texts in China, as well as one of the most ancient libraries in Asia. Located at Tianyi Street in Ningbo City, the building was constructed in 1532. Fan Qing (1505-1580), founder of the Tianyi Mansion, was vice-minister of National Defense of the Ming royal court. Fan Qing was a fan of books, and in order to collect more books and texts, he searched and bought books nationwide. When Tianyi Mansion was put into use, Fan Qing had collected over 70,000 volumes of books and all of which were housed in Tianyi Mansion.
  After hundreds of years' vicissitude, in the 1940s, there were only 13,000 volumes collected in Tianyi. In the 1980s, the local government began to rebuilt Tianyi Mansion and recollected ancient books and texts for Tianyi. At present, there are over 300,000 volumes of ancient books and texts housed in Tianyi, including 640 volumes which are the only existing copies.