Luoyang

Luoyang stands on the Luo River in a natural basin guarded by mountain passes, a position that made it a capital again and again. The Western Zhou built the city of Chengzhou here in the eleventh century BC, and from 770 BC the Eastern Zhou ruled from it. The Eastern Han moved the capital to Luoyang in AD 25, and the city became the eastern end of the Silk Road and the point where Buddhism is traditionally said to have entered China, with the White Horse Temple founded in its outskirts. The Confucian classics were carved on stone tablets and set up outside the imperial academy here in the second century.

The city was sacked and rebuilt repeatedly. The Northern Wei moved their court here in 493 and began carving the Longmen cliffs, work that continued under the Tang for more than four centuries. Under the Sui a vast new capital was laid out astride the river and linked to the Grand Canal; under the Tang, Luoyang was the eastern capital and, during the reign of Wu Zetian, the seat of government itself. The An Lushan rebellion of the eighth century devastated it, and when the Song chose Kaifeng, Luoyang became a secondary city of gardens and retired officials.

Centuries of decline followed. Modern Luoyang was rebuilt after 1949 as a planned industrial centre: Soviet-assisted plants in the new Jianxi district made tractors, bearings and mining machinery, and the population grew rapidly. Archaeology has run alongside the factories ever since, and a string of capital sites along the Luo valley is now protected, with Longmen inscribed by UNESCO in 2000 and the Dingding Gate site added as part of the Silk Roads listing in 2014.

The peony is Luoyang's emblem, counted with the Longmen Grottoes and the water banquet as one of the wonders of the city. It appears on shopfronts, embroidery, porcelain and painting, and the April flowering fills the parks and the hotels. Peony painting in ink and colour is a local craft with its own studios and schools.

Buddhism shaped the city's culture as much as the court did. The White Horse Temple remains a place of pilgrimage, the Longmen carvings are studied as the main record of Chinese Buddhist sculpture between the fifth and eighth centuries, and the martial tradition of Shaolin on nearby Mount Song draws students from across China and abroad. Tangsancai, the three-coloured lead-glazed pottery made for Tang tombs and excavated in quantity around Luoyang, is copied by workshops in the villages north of the city and sold as a local craft.

Spoken Luoyang Mandarin is a Central Plains dialect, flatter in tone than standard Mandarin and a source of local pride. Yu opera, Henan's own high-voiced operatic form, is performed in city theatres and informally in parks, where retired people gather in the mornings to sing, practise tai chi and play cards. Evening life is outdoors: families walk the riverside parks, and squares fill with dancing after dark. Residents tend to measure their city against Xi'an and Kaifeng, the other ancient capitals nearby, and are quick to point out how many dynasties ruled from here.

About seven million people live in the Luoyang prefecture, with about two and three-quarter million in the built-up urban area, making it Henan's second city after Zhengzhou. The population is spread across distinct centres: the old city and central Xigong, the industrial west in Jianxi, and the newer southern districts across the Luo River, which have grown fastest since the high-speed station opened.

Heavy industry still underpins the economy — tractors and agricultural machinery, bearings, glass, aluminium and mining equipment — although the state plants employ far fewer people than they did, and services, tourism and logistics have grown to fill the gap. Tourism is strongly seasonal, peaking in April and again in the autumn. The surrounding counties farm wheat and maize, and many households combine farming with work in the city.

The day begins early. Soup shops open before dawn and are often sold out by mid-morning; markets are busiest before the heat; offices and factories break for a long lunch. Summer evenings pull people onto the riverbanks and into the parks once the sun is down. The recurring concerns are those of many inland Chinese cities: an ageing population, young graduates leaving for Zhengzhou or the coast, air quality in winter, and water supply in a dry province.

Luoyang's food is built on soup. The city eats broth for breakfast — beef, mutton, lamb offal or pork — served with chilli oil, coriander and a flatbread torn into the bowl, from shops that open before dawn. The best-known formal meal is the water banquet, shuixi, twenty-four dishes — eight cold and sixteen warm — served in bowls rather than plates and arriving one after another like flowing water, cooked in broths, gravies and juices. It is credited to the Tang dynasty and is served at weddings and for important guests.

Wheat dominates the everyday table, as it does across Henan: hand-pulled noodles in mutton broth, steamed buns, and thick soups thickened with starch and seasoned heavily with white pepper, eaten at breakfast. Sweet potato and millet appear in porridges, and pickled vegetables come with almost everything.

Street eating concentrates in the old city, where the lanes around the drum tower sell grilled skewers, fried dough, sesame pancakes and stewed snacks from early evening until late. Henan produces its own light beers and strong sorghum-based baijiu, and jasmine and chrysanthemum teas are the common accompaniment to a meal. Peony petals are used in cakes, tea and sweets sold as souvenirs during the spring festival.