Luoyang

• 1. Introduction

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  Luoyang sits where the Luo River meets the Yellow River, in the west of Henan province, China. Its name carries a small lesson in geography. The Luo flows west to east, the sun hangs to the south, and so light always falls on the river's north bank, the sunny or yang side. A city named for where the sun reliably shines holds the distinction of being the earliest of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. Why did so many dynasties keep returning to this one stretch of the central plain? Who razed it, rebuilt it, and renamed it again and again? And how did a Roman mission, a female emperor, and a Christian Sogdian woman all leave their mark on the same place? The answers run from a settlement raised in 1036 BC to a subway line that opened on the 28th of March 2021.

• 2. Many Names

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  Shendu, meaning Capital of the God, was the name the city wore under Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history. The habit of renaming followed Luoyang through the centuries. It was Luoyi and Luozhou in earlier eras, and Jingluo at other times. During the Tang dynasty it answered to Dongdu. The Song dynasty called it Xijing. For a long stretch it was Henanfu, a name it carried until 1912, when it reclaimed Luoyang, the title that had always been its primary one. Each rename marks a shift in who held power and what they wanted the city to represent, a thread worth holding as the rulers themselves come into view.

• 3. Founding On The Plain

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  In 1036 BC the Duke of Zhou built a settlement called Chengzhou for the remnants of the captured Shang nobility. He also moved the Nine Tripod Cauldrons there from the Zhou capital at Haojing. A second Western Zhou capital, Wangcheng, also called Luoyi, rose 15 km west of Chengzhou. Wangcheng became the seat of the Eastern Zhou dynasty in 771 BC, and the Eastern Zhou capital later shifted to Chengzhou in 510 BC. Modern Luoyang stands over the ruins of Wangcheng, which remain visible at Wangcheng Park. Lu Buwei, chief minister to Qin Shi Huang, was given Luoyang and began programs to develop and beautify it. Liu Bang is said to have visited and considered making it his capital, before his ministers persuaded him to choose Chang'an instead.

• 4. Han Capital And Catastrophe

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  On the 27th of November in 25 AD, Emperor Guangwu of Han declared Luoyang the capital of the Eastern Han dynasty. The city walls formed a rectangle, 4 km from south to north and 2.5 km from west to east, with the Gu River running just outside the walls. The rectangular Southern Palace and Northern Palace stood 3 km apart, joined by a structure called The Covered Way. The work of a capital piled up year by year. In 26 AD came the Altar of the Gods of the Soils and Grains, the Altar of Heaven, and the Temple of the Founder. The Imperial University was restored in 29 AD. In 48 AD the Yang Canal linked the capital to the Luo, and in 56 AD the main observatory, the Spiritual Terrace, was built. Decline arrived just as steadily. The Yellow Turbans were defeated in 184 AD but left the state fatally weakened, and the Han capital burned on the 24th of September 189 AD.

• 5. Sacked And Restored

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  On the 4th of April in 190 AD, Chancellor Dong Zhuo ordered his soldiers to ransack and raze the city as he retreated from a coalition of regional lords. The court moved west to the more defensible Chang'an. Cao Cao later held the last Han emperor, Xian, in Xuchang between 196 and 220. Luoyang returned to prominence when Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of the Wei dynasty, declared it his capital in 220 AD. The Jin dynasty, successor to Wei, was also established here, and at the height of Jin rule the city held 600,000 people, probably the second largest in the world after Rome. That height did not last. During the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians, rebel forces of the Xiongnu-led Han-Zhao dynasty sacked and razed the city in 311 AD, an event known as the Disaster of Yongjia. In 328 the plain hosted a battle between the Han-Zhao and Later Zhao dynasties that left the Later Zhao dominant in the north.

• 6. Grottoes And Pagodas

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  In 493 AD, Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei moved his capital from Datong to Luoyang as part of a sinicization campaign. By 495 he had relocated more than 150,000 people to the site and begun carving the rock-cut Longmen Grottoes. More than 30,000 Buddhist statues from this dynasty have been found in the caves, which were chapels dug into cliffs, some of the sculptures two-faced. The classical temple at the caves, the Gate of Dragons, protected the carvings and the cave of Buddha. The same emperor built the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song to house an Indian monk, and Luoyang gained the Yongning Temple, the tallest pagoda in China. The city again reached 600,000 at its Northern Wei height. Then the warlord Gao Huan captured it and forced its people to move to his capital at Ye in 534, emptying the city once more.

• 7. Eastern Capital

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  Emperor Yang of Sui founded a new Luoyang in 604 AD on the site of the old one, borrowing the layout his father had used for the rebuilt Chang'an. Under the Tang dynasty the city was Dongdu, the Eastern Capital, and at its peak held around one million people, second only to Chang'an, then the largest city in the world. Empress Wu moved the capital of her Zhou dynasty here and built the tallest palace in Chinese history, on a site within the Sui Tang Luoyang city. The An Lushan Rebellion damaged the city. Tang Luoyang also preserved a quieter, more intimate record. Epitaphs there commemorate a Nestorian Christian Sogdian woman, Lady An, who died in 821, and her Han Chinese husband Hua Xian, who died in 827. Another epitaph honors a Christian Sogdian woman, also surnamed An, placed in her tomb by her military officer son on the 22nd of January 815. Their mixed-race sons faced no barrier from faith or ethnicity, rising as civil and military officials while openly supporting Christian monasteries.

• 8. Peonies And A Living City

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  Peonies are the city flower of Luoyang, and since 1983 the city has hosted the annual National Peony Fair. More than 19 million tourists visited during the 2014 festival. Luoyang is also the birthplace of the Luoyang Water Banquet, a 24-course culinary tradition. The city's deep past sits beside an active present. The Longmen Grottoes joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000, followed in 2014 by Grand Canal barns and several Silk Roads sites including the Han Wei Luoyang City Site. The Luoyang Museum, established in 1958, displays 1,700 exhibits reaching back to the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. Eighty km to the south-east stands the Gaocheng Astronomical Observatory, built in 1276 by Guo Shoujing to measure the sun's shadow. By 2022 the municipality governed seven districts, seven counties, and a permanent population of 7.079 million. On the 28th of March 2021 the central government approved a reorganization that doubled the urban area, and on the very same day Line 1 of the Luoyang Subway opened.