Kaifeng, a Chinese capital during seven dynasties, is located in eastern Henan province, just south of the Yellow River, about 400 miles south of Beijing. In some ways, Kaifeng was an odd location for a capital. Out on the open plain with no geographical features to provide any natural defenses, it was also in the floodplain of the Yellow River. However, it was this proximity to the great river and its tributaries and canals, as well as its location in the heart of China, well connected by a complex road system, that brought Kaifeng its great commercial success.

Chinese tales place the capital of Fu Xi, the first of the legendary emperors in the area. Archaeological evidence of human occupation of the site dates back to the Neolithic period and artifacts have been found from the Shang dynasty, 16th-11th centuries BC. In the feudal Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) the ruler of the Zheng kingdom established a border post and a grain storate facility here. During the Warring States period, a time when the feudal lords were jockeying for control, the state of Wei (220-265 BC) founded their capital here, calling it Daliang. This capital was mostly destroyed by the Qin, though what was left continued to be used as a market town. In 781 AD, the Tang built a small walled fort here that they named Bian.

During the Five Dynasties Period (907-960), when the jiedushi, regional military governors, were vying for power, Zhu Wen, a warlord and the founder of the Later Liang dynasty (907-923), established his base at Kaifeng in 907, which he called Bianzhou. This was destroyed in 923 by Emperor Zhuangzong of the Later Tang dynasty (923-236), who moved his capital to back to the previous Tang capital at Luoyang.

It was in the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127 AD) when Bianzhou, alternately called Bianlang or Bianjing, rose to its greatest prominence. Kaifeng was also referred to as Dongjing, which is a generic sort of name for Eastern Capital, something which may have referred more to the imperial city enclosure than to the city as a whole. For 167 years the city prospered as the main capital of the Northern Song. During this time, the Grand Canal was expanded which allowed commerce to flourish.

The Khitan Liao had come down from the northern steppes to Kaifeng in 946, but retreated in the face of military opposition. Border conflicts with the Liao continued throughout the early Northern Song period and after a series of military defeats, the two parties negotiated the Shanyuan Treaty in 1005. The terms obligated the Song to pay a yearly tribute to the Liao in return for stability on their northern borders.

The Song broke this treaty in 1125 when they encouraged the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty in Manchuria to attack the Liao. The Liao dynasty was destroyed in 1125 by the Jurchens, but the Jurchens then turned on the Song. When the Song dynasty fell to these northern invaders in 1127, the remnants of the Song court fled south to Hangzhou, and were then known as the Southern Song dynasty. Kaifeng was greatly damaged in this final conflict and once again became a rural market town.

During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) Kaifeng was used as a provincial capital. In the early 17th century, Kaifeng was inundated by a series of floods from the Yellow River, and in 1644, the magistrates opened the gates to the dikes in an attempt to save the city from the invading peasant rabble led by Li Zicheng, a move which resulted in the deaths of 300,000 people, as well as the destruction of much of the remaining architecture from the Song period. Officialdom abandoned Kaifeng once again until the Qing emperor Kangxi (1661-1722) rebuilt the city. He began flood control measures along the Yellow River and repaired the Grand Canal. The Yellow River flooded again in 1841, severely damaging Kaifeng, but the city was again rebuilt in 1843. This late reconstruction defines modern-day Kaifeng.


Growth of the City

Once of the most interesting things about Kaifeng is that it grew from the inside out, much like our urban centers today have evolved, rather than the usual Chinese way of planning a city starting with the one outer wall. Kaifeng had three city walls.

The first and innermost wall was that which surrounded the old Tang fort. This enclosure quickly became overcrowded when the Later Zhou dynasty made Kaifeng their capital so people moved outside the walls to establish their homes and businesses. The second wall was constructed in 907 for their protection, and this further enclosure became known as the Old or Inner City. The space within the original walls became the palace city, and was located to the northwest inside the outer wall, rather than the usual dead center position. Further growth swelled the population and sent the inhabitants out looking for room beyond the walls again. A third wall was was built in 956 and the area protected by this new wall was called the New or Outer City.

Kuhn relates the story that Emperor Shizong ordered Zhao Kuangyin, who later was known as Taizu, founder of the Song dynasty, to ride his horse at a gallop straight south from the Gate of the Vermillion Bird, the main south gate of the Old City, until it became winded. This occurred 2 kilometers out and so defined the distance of the new walls from the old. 100,000 men were conscripted to build this new wall which was 27 kilometers long and over 12 meters high. The whitewashed walls had four gates in the north wall, three in each of the other sides, and nine or ten sluice gates over the rivers and canals. The original moat, called Guarding the Dragon River, was over 30 meters wide. In the early 1080s the width of this moat was almost doubled and its banks planted with willow trees.

Because the outer two walls were built to enclose existing structures, they did not conform to the usual Chinese city building plans of a square shape, symmetrical street layouts and the exact north-south orientation that was considered propitious. Indeed, it was said that the shape of the city when viewed from a nearby mound could be compared to a crouching cow. Still there was the usual main thoroughfare, the Imperial Way or Avenue, leading from the central outer gate to the main gate of the palace compound. This was a three lane road, two hundred meters wide, which was connected to major trade routes outside the city.

There was also a main east-west avenue, connecting the gates on the side walls. Four rivers ran through Kaifeng - the main Bian, the Cai, Wuzhang, and Jinshui, along with connecting canals. The city's economy became dependent on water transport not only for trade with other regions but to move goods around inside its walls. The canals also acted as collectors which fed the protective moat outside the walls and provided water for the imperial gardens.

Before the Song dynasty, it was the custom to divide a city into walled and gated wards, or fang. There were areas for residences, for businesses, for temples, each further divided according to the type of activity conducted therein. This allowed the government to maintain strict control of the population's coming and going, as there were various curfews in different parts of the cities, and enabled the tax collectors to keep track of what they were owed.

But because of the sprawling development of Kaifeng, this ward system was losing its grip on the city even before the end of the Tang period. By the Later Zhou era, there were no clear divisions between residential and business zones in most parts of the city. Businesses and residences shared the same streets, and commerce thrived with the decreased governmental control. There were even businesses lining the Imperial Way and the main east-west road, where before the shops had been relegated to the side streets.

When the Song extended the Grand Canal and further developed the waterways for commerce, even more people crowded into the urban area, and trade flourished in all parts of the city. Once most of the curfews were lifted, many of the shops were open 24 hours a day. This unzoned city model apparently worked and by the eleventh century, Kaifeng was a major commercial and industrial center with over 400,000 residents, despite the recurring waves of typhus which periodically decreased the population.

There were of course monasteries throughout the city. The grand Buddhist Xianggou Monastery, built in 555 AD, reached the height of its influence during the Song dynasty, housing more than one thousand monks within its walls. The Song did not place as much importance to establishing religious edifaces as had previous dynasties, though the Song emperors did maintain imperial altars for public ceremonies.

About ten years before the end of the Song dynasty, a large artificial mountain was brought to the city by boat from Anhui province to grace the imperial gardens, which took their name from this new feature. The stone was more than twenty zhang tall. A zhang is an old Chinese measure of length equal to ten chi, a Chinese unit of measurement, or about 3.5 meters, almost 12 feet. In order to bring this huge rock into Kaifeng, one of the city gate towers was torn down. One has to wonder if this breaching of the city wall contributed to the downfall of Kaifeng as the Song capital. Power for beauty. What a way to go.


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