Luoyang

Chang'an is unusual.

Rather than putting the capital in Luoyang, which is the traditional capital or center of the world, they moved it to further west to where the Qing had their own capital region.

And Chang'an is unusual because it was built from the ground up.

It didn't occupy a former city.

Is that going to be because of top-down decision-making? So the Han decided, no more palace for you, little town.

You're going to get a carpentry.

Or is it more that the population just naturally gravitated to places like Chang'an and Luoyang because they were where the action was happening? like people moving from rural areas to cities nowadays? Or is it both?

Yeah, that could very well be because I think the Han removed or relocated forcibly some of those royal families to Chang'an, removing their power, removing the kings from their base of power and therefore turning those cities into what we consider more multi-purpose, functional cities rather than a temple, symbolic center.

So basically, it was the dynasty that was ruling over China in the early 4th century.

They were forced out from their north-based capital, Luoyang, by so-called barbarians.

you know, invasion.

And so they fled across the Yangtze River to the south.

But although he assumed his gift was long forgotten, an entire country was about to hunt him down just to show him the answer.

You see, in 1999, Ronald Sikulski was teaching English in Luoyang, China, when a TV segment stopped him cold.

It featured Yin Yuzhen, a woman attempting the impossible, turning a stretch of the massive Muas desert into a forest, one sapling at a time.

Moved, Sokolsky wrote letters back to America until a Boston foundation agreed to donate $5,000 to her mission.

Emperor Han Gengshi ended up doing away with Liu Yan amidst all the strife, and this left Liu Xiu, who was really the only one who had broad support and was respected for his leadership capability.

Emperor Gengshi moved the capital to Luoyang and began to take steps to consolidate power and get everything in order after what had been a long period of killing and destruction.

But in the end, there was immediate dissatisfaction with this newly restored Han Emperor and his sheer incompetence in how he ran things.

And while he was trying to sort things out, Liu Xiu, who Gengshi had spared, was quietly working behind the scenes to avenge his brother Liu Yan's death at the hands of this already very unpopular and newly restored Han Emperor.

In the meantime, Emperor Gengshi decided to return the capital to Chang'an and then tried to fill the vacuum left by the defeat of Wang Mang.

You've probably noticed the capital since earliest times kept moving back and forth between Chang'an and Luoyang.

Those are the two most famous and historic of the ancient capitals of China.

Clearly this new Han Emperor Gengshi didn't have the right stuff, and many at the imperial court saw him for what he unfortunately was, clearly incompetent and surrounded with officials who were extremely abusive of their positions of power.

By the time that Bodhidharma is supposed to have arrived in China, northern Wei is, uh, quickly becoming sinified, uh, that is to say, adopting Chinese culture, customs, and so on.

And in fact, they actually move their capital to Luoyang, which is one of the sort of...

I think there's four or five different Chinese cities that sort of serve as the, the capital city at different points in time for different dynasties.

The Southern dynasty, meanwhile, is centered around the city of Jiankang, which was established, uh, originally as a kind of government in exile, but the Jin were overthrown here and, uh, succeeded by a number of other dynasties.

[laughs]

And I kept thinking it was like one of those, you know, that, uh, garden in Luoyang where you can only see the 13 stone...

Is it 13 stones? You can only see 13 or 14 of the rocks from-

[laughs] This is Zen