Nanjing calls this tree a pine, and it has been a juniper for about 1,500 years. The Chinese name, Liuchao Song, dates from a time when pines and cypresses were not told apart by name, and it stuck long after botany caught up. By tradition it was planted by Emperor Wu of Liang himself, who reigned from 502 to 549, in the gardens of the Liang imperial palace. That is a legend rather than a record, but both Wikipedia and Baidu Baike put the tree at over 1,500 years, and nobody disputes that it is very old. The palace did not last. The Sui armies destroyed the city in the sixth century, and the tree came through it. The ground later became the Ming dynasty's Imperial Academy, the Guozijian, and after that the campus of Southeast University, where students now use it as a meeting point. Locally it is called the tree king of Jinling, the old name for Nanjing. It is twelve metres tall with a six-metre crown, and it is held together with more than luck. The inside of the trunk is dead and hollow; the tree lives through its outer bark alone, braced with steel rods and concrete. After expert care, it has sprouted new shoots and partly recovered its vigour. The trunk is about 99 centimetres across. That is not large by the standards of ancient trees, which is part of what makes the age hard to take in.
Northwest corner of the Sipailou campus, Southeast University, Xuanwu District, Nanjing, Jiangsu You can recognise it by the hollow trunk, about a metre across, braced with steel rods and concrete. It stands in the northwest corner of Southeast University's Sipailou campus.
Free. Stands in the northwest corner of Southeast University's historic Sipailou campus, whose grounds visitors can walk; it is a well-known campus landmark, on university grounds rather than in a public park.
Central Nanjing, Sipailou campus of Southeast University, Xuanwu District; within walking distance of central Nanjing metro stations.