Grassmat is a specialty in Yinzhou District of Ningbo. Locals at Huanggulin Town started to make grassmats long ago as the natural conditions (climate and soil) were good for mat grass growing. The grass is light green, straight and even, thin and elastic. Mats made of the grass are soft and smooth, elastic and easy to roll up.

Huanggulin enjoys a long history of grassmat making. Local annals say the grassmats from Mingzhou were traded to all over China and other lands in the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties. The grassmat business of Ningbo went to its prime time in the Qing Dynasty when the mats were exported to Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. Premier Zhou Enlai presented 40 Ningbo grassmats to foreign friends when he attended the Geneva Conference in 1954.

Ningbo grassmats were nicknamed huazi (literally means something slippery in local dialect), which was derived from an incident in a wartime period in the Southern Song Dynasty. The story goes that to prevent the invaders from the Jin Dynasty, a general of the Southern Song troops paved the roads with mats that were so slippery as to make the enemy’s horses stumble!