The Gateway to China's Spiritual Heart — the Henan provincial capital where the Yellow River (the 'Mother River of Chinese Civilisation') bends through loess plains, the Shaolin Temple is 80 km away in Songshan Mountain, and the Shang dynasty (3,600-year-old bronze vessels, oracle bones) was the world's most advanced civilisation when Rome was a village
Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan Province and one of China's major transport hubs — a fast-growing city of 10 million that serves as the gateway to the densest concentration of ancient Chinese heritage in any single province. The region around Zhengzhou was the cradle of Chinese civilisation: the Yellow River (Huang He) flows through northern Henan, and the river valley between Zhengzhou and Luoyang was the heartland of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) — the first Chinese dynasty with written records. Yin Xu (Anyang, 3 hours north of Zhengzhou) is the Shang dynasty capital, with oracle b…
The Zhengzhou area's archaeological record begins with the Peiligang culture (Neolithic, c. 7000–5000 BCE) and the subsequent Yangshao and Longshan cultures. The Shang dynasty established one of its earliest capitals at Zhengzhou (called Ao) around 1600 BCE — the earthen city walls of the Shang capital, measuring up to 10 m high in places, are partially preserved within modern Zhengzhou. The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) controlled the Henan region from Luoyang (their eastern capital). The Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), Song dynasty (960–1279 CE, whose capital Bianjing…