Kaifeng

But he is terrified of getting caught by the Mongols again.

Um, can we get a map of, uh, North China, please? I want it with the Yellow River if you have one handy, showing, uh, Kaifeng if we can.

I don't know.

I don't think I got one right on hand that shows it.

It's very close to the steppe.

And, uh, the Jin emperor, he's going, "Look, I don't really trust these Mongol guys.

This is very dangerous, very exposed position." So what he does, he abandons Zhongdu to go south to Kaifeng, or it's called, um, Bianfang at the time, I believe.

Now, Bianfang is just to the south of the Yellow River.

The government set up these congee factories, or porridge factories, which basically cooked vast amounts of congee to feed those who had nothing to eat.

In the city of Kaifeng alone, at this time, over 70,000 local people were said to rely on the congee factories to survive.

In the province of Shandong on the East coast, the agricultural output fell even further to less than 30% of normal.

The drought lasted all year and many people became refugees, choosing to abandon their homes to try to find a living elsewhere.

The capital was always somewhere else.

Xi'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Nanjing.

Beijing was always out on the edge, not in the center for a long time.

And then the Liao dynasty came around.

And then all of a sudden, they needed a capital for their country.

11 cities are on the shortlist.

Nanjing, Xi'an, Kaifeng, Chongqing, and there are a bunch of others.

The party members went through them one by one.

You simply threw the dough coffin away after you were done with the meat.

We see this model in the Song dynasty of China as well, specifically in the city of Kaifeng.

The city was packed with late night food stalls and professional order takers called chai tu.

For a small fee, these chai tu would even carry hot food directly to your lodgings, an early form of food delivery.

When you have a dense urban setup, your entertainment is also likely to take the form of commercially monetized high capacity districts.

In Kaifeng, these districts were called Wazi quarters, massive entertainment precincts housing timber theaters called Gaolan, each offering continuous performances like acrobatics, puppet shows and serialized storytelling.

You paid a single admission fee to enter the Wazi area and could move from show to show inside of the district.

For the city, these wazzy districts were an absolute goldmine because the state held a monopoly on alcohol distillation.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, back in the 12th century during the, uh, the Song dynasty, a lot of travelers and traders kept coming through the, uh, Hangzhou and Kaifeng, uh, pr- uh, areas in China, and had a hard time ordering food while there.

So the Chinese had the great idea of creating a menu in which people could just point at and order the food.

Mm-hmm.