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‎2,000 Years of Chinese History! The Mandate of Heaven and Confucius: World History #7

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For imperial Chinese dynasties, maintaining order in the realm was often the most essential task for governments constantly menaced by wars, rebellions, and uprisings.

No wonder, then, that Chinese emperors and officials devised vast and complex legal systems to govern their empire and their subjects' behavior. In Mencius (《孟子》), a collection of stories compiled during the fourth century BCE, about the Confucian scholar of the same name, the famous philosopher is quoted as saying: "Nothing can be accomplished without rules and standards (不以规矩，不能成方圆)."

But not all laws and regulations throughout China's imperial history were fair, just, or rational, and some were just bizarre. From regulating astronomers' employment opportunities to forbidding men from crying, here are some of the weirdest laws from Chinese history:

Short and Innocent

In today's China, minors under the age of 12 cannot bear criminal responsibility, but back in the Qin dynasty (221 - 206 BCE), it was height rather than age that determined a person's status before the law. According to the "Eighteen Laws of Qin," a set of legal codes written on bamboo slips unearthed in Hubei province in 1975, men under six chi eight cun (around 1.5 meters) of height, and women under six chi two cun (1.43 meters), couldn't be convicted of crimes.

Apparently, this was because the household registration system, known as the hukou today, was incomplete at the time, so it was often impossible to verify a person's age. Instead, the government used height to determine when a person had reached adulthood. Furthermore, Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Qin dynasty, apparently only reached 1.5 meters tall when he was 22 years old, so he allegedly believed that his subjects could only be defined as adults once they grew taller than that.

Qin Boys Don't Cry

If you were male, and tall enough to be regarded as an adult, you needed to be extra careful of your emotions. The same bamboo records showed that Qin laws prohibited men from crying. If an adult man was found shedding tears, his beard and eyebrows would be shaved off as punishment. The Qin dynasty is well-known for its worship of " martial spirit " and warrior traditions, so perhaps crying was seen as a sign of weakness in men.

Three's a (Drunken) Crowd

In the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE), having a few drinks with friends could be risky. The law stated that if three or more people got together to drink, the participants would be fined four taels of gold. The only exceptions were gatherings such as weddings, funerals, or festivals.

Many rulers and dynasties attempted to regulate the consumption of alcohol, in part because making alcohol requires grain-rice, sorghum, or millet-that was often in short supply. Rulers also feared that drunken citizens could easily turn into a disorderly and violent rabble disturbing the peace. In Stratagems of the Warring States (《战国策》), a text on diplomacy and strategies compiled during the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE - 25 CE), Yu the Great, the legendary king who supposedly initiated the Xia dynasty around 4,000 years ago, is quoted as declaring, "In the future, there will definitely be a country destroyed because of alcohol."

Litterbugs Beware

If you thought Chinese cities' garbage sorting regimes were strict today, with fines in place for incorrect disposal of different types of trash, spare a thought for those living in the Shang dynasty (1600 - 1046 BCE). According to the Han Fei Zi (《韩非子》), a philosophical and legal text by Warring States period (475 - 221 BCE) scholar Han Fei (韩非), Shang laws called for chopping off a person's hand if authorities caught them throwing rubbish on the roads.

Write Neat or Drink Ink

During the Sui dynasty (581 - 618), China's imperial examination system, the keju, took shape, theoretically allowing anyone in the country to become a government official. But failing the test was not without consequences, especially if you weren't neat. According to the Book of Sui （《隋书》), the official historical records of the Sui dynasty (581 - 618), Sui laws stipulated that examinees with bad handwriting would be punished by being forced to drink one sheng (around 200 milliliters) of ink. Since the exam answers were in theory written to the emperor (though in practice his officials would generally do the marking), bad handwriting indicated disrespect to the Son of Heaven.

Respect Carp...

While the carp today is used jokingly on social media to express good luck, talking about the fish the wrong way could get you into big trouble in the Tang dynasty (618 - 907). Carp (鲤 lǐ) had the same pronunciation as the surname of the Tang emperors (李 lǐ) in Chinese. According to the The Miscellany of Youyang (《酉阳杂俎》), a record of legends, folk customs, and herbal remedies compiled in the Tang dynasty, the carp had to be referred to as "Lord Red Carp (赤鲤公)" to show respect to the imperial family. Also because of this homophone, "those who happen to catch carps should relieve the fish immediately; it is not acceptable to eat them...and those who sell carp will be flogged 60 times."

However, like all legal provisions, this law was only as good as its enforcement. Judging by the amount of Tang poets who wrote about catching and eating carp without any record of punishment, it seems this law was loosely administered.

...And Chickens Too

Emperor Renzong of the Yuan dynasty (1206 - 1368) had a similar idea as his Tang predecessors. Yuan dynasty historian Yang Yu (杨瑀) recorded in his historical notes Shanju Xinyu (《山居新语》) that during Renzong's reign, "people in the capital were not allowed to hold chickens upside down. Offenders would be convicted, probably because the emperor's zodiac sign was the chicken." How exactly people got around this law-holding the chicken by the neck perhaps, or cradling it-is unknown, but it would certainly have been inconvenient.

Studying the Heavens is for Life

In ancient times, the emperor was known as the "Son of Heaven." The imperial government would regularly reinforce the idea of the emperor's divine right to rule with stories and symbolism that appeared to indicate Heaven's pleasure at the emperor's policies. Much of this was linked to astronomy, with the study of the objects in heaven often equated to divining the future of the empire and its rulers. Since the Qin dynasty, governments had special departments to observe celestial phenomena, draw up calendars, and produce advice based on the position and whims of heavenly observations.

When Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644), came to power, he decided that laws were needed to control the imperial "bureau of astronomy (钦天监)" more tightly. He promulgated a rule that bound all officials in the bureau to their posts, forbidding them from transferring to other departments. What's more, their descendants were also bound to astronomy and forbidden from engaging in other fields of work. The punishment for ignoring the law was exile.

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Legal Tangle: China's Weirdest Ancient Laws

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Eight of China's weirdest ancient laws, from forbidding men crying to punishment for catching carp

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Kids learn about the civil service in Ancient Chinese history. Government officials and the exams they had to pass.

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21 Facts About Ancient Chinese Food You'll Wish You Didn't Know

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Food in China is a deeply ingrained part of Chinese culture. And with 56 legally recognized ethnic groups, there are hundreds of distinct recipes and flavors representing the country rapidly approaching 1.4 billion people. The largest group in mainland China are known as Han making up 92% of the total population.

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Rice and noodles were both popular. Rice was served at festivals in the beginning. Rice dumplings were served during the first full moon in the new year so that people could make a wish on them. Rice soon became a staple, eaten nearly every day. A thin tasty noodle was made from wheat.

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The remarkable inventions and technological achievements of the Chinese civilization have not only shaped but continue to influence the world today as they did at their inception. Chinese scientific discoveries and technological inventions cover almost the whole spectrum of the sciences, from mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, astronomy, to geophysics, botany, etc. and are still being used by the whole world today. The ancient Chinese scientists were the first to observe the sunspots, they researched magnetic phenomena, but also calculated, as did the ancient Greeks, the value of π - the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. The compass, gunpowder, paper, moveable type, bronze and iron casting, the seismograph, crossbow, iron plowshare, wheelbarrow, and the stern rudder are some of the technological achievements of China.

This collection consists of over 90 exhibits, all accurate reproductions of the most important Chinese inventions dating since the third century B.C.E. through 1000 A.D. Among the objects are the first ever recorded seismograph cast in bronze with its eight elaborately designed receptacles in the form of frogs (132 A.D.), ancient agricultural tools and inventions (i.e., the ancient Chinese plow that first appeared 5000 years ago and the first wheelbarrow, which was constructed a century, approximately, before the equivalent European one), the first printing press which was operational centuries before Gutenberg, a very large wood sculpted armillary sphere and other astronomical instruments, textile equipment, the forerunner of the odometer, ships, etc.

The collection is divided into thematic units, such as: Astronomy and Time Measurement, Navigation and Orientation, Weaving and Embroidery, Papermaking and Printing. The topics covered are a treasure trove for educational programs, guaranteed to keep students' interest.

The collection highlights the innovative and technological achievements of China dating back thousands of years, allowing visitors of all ages to discover and appreciate their impact on the course of world history.

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The remarkable inventions and technological achievements of the Chinese civilization have not only shaped but continue to influence the world today as they did at their inception. Chinese scientific discoveries and technological inventions cover almost the whole spectrum of the sciences, from mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, astronomy, to geophysics, botany, etc.

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A Chinese philosopher named K’ung Fu-tzu or Confucius, the Westernized version, believed that a society could become perfect, if the people who lived in it exhibited “beautiful conduct.” Confucius was born in 551 B.C.E. He had a government job which he gave up to devote his life to teaching people h…

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China’s 7 Most Significant Historical Sites You Should Visit

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China’s 7 Most Significant Historical Sites You Should Visit

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China has a history of thousands of years, which gives it a lot of historical sites. The seven most significant are the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, and the Potala Palace, the Summer Place, the Mogao Grottoes, and the three Confucian sites. All of these are UNESCO World Heritage.

1. The Great Wall: the Longest Defensive System in the World

The Great Wall of China is one of the greatest sights in the world. It's an ancient defensive architecture. The "Long Wall" has a long history - more than 2,300 years. It was built in different areas by different states/dynasties to protect different territorial borders.

The entire Great Wall of China zigzags across the mountains of northern China. We highly recommend hiking along the best-protected sections of the Great Wall: Mutianyu and Jinshanling.

2. The Forbidden City: 9999 Rooms for 24 Emperors

The Forbidden City (or the Palace Museum) is one of the must-visit attractions for travelers to China. It used to be an imperial palace in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

The layout of this palace is strictly according to Chinese fengshui theory. China's best-preserved imperial palace is the world's largest ancient palatial structure (7.2 ha. or 17.8 ac.), the essence and culmination of traditional Chinese architectural accomplishment.

3. The Terracotta Army: First Emperor Qin's Buried Battalions

The museum, with three pits containing the Terracotta Army, covers an area of 22,780 square meters. Over 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers and horses, and more than 10,000 bronze weapons were unearthed in these three pits.

The Terracotta Army is candidate for the title " eighth wonder of the world" and the is largest military museum underground. An interesting fact is that all the terracotta soldiers were made to face east towards Emperor Qin's enemies of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).

Click to see Facts You Won't Know about the Terracotta Army and How to Visit the Terracotta Army - an Insider's Guide.

4. The Potala Palace: Masterpiece of Tibetan Architecture

If you are interested in Tibetan culture, the Potala Palace is the attraction which you should not miss. It was first built as the palace of Songtsen Gampo (617-650), founder of the Tu-Bo Dynasty (吐蕃王朝). After being rebuilt in the 17th century, it was the residence of Dalai Lamas.

There are plenty of precious historical relics in the palace, including over 10,000 Buddha statues made of gold, silver, jade, wood, or clay, and about 10,000 thangkas (scroll paintings related to Budhhism). The gorgeous mural paintings, wooden carvings, and color paintings used for decoration are outstanding.

5. The Summer Palace: China's Largest Imperial Garden

The Summer Palace is China&'s largest imperial garden. UNESCO added this 300-hectare (740-acre) site to the World Heritage List in 1998, and described it as "...a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value."

The Summer Palace was a royal summer resort in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), so the architectures and the layout there are quite exquisite. Boat cruises are available on Kunming Lake. There are numerous stores in Suzhou Street, selling souvenirs like antiques, snacks, silk, jewelry, and tea. The shop assistants there are dressed in the costumes of the Qing Dynasty.

6. The Mogao Grottoes: a Holy Land of Buddhist Art

The Mogao Grottoes are famous for their exquisite mural paintings and Buddha statues. It has 735 grottoes, 450,000 square meters of mural paintings, 2,415 colored Buddha statues made of clay, and more than 50,000 historical relics. All of these make the Mogao Grottoes the largest and the most significant "holy land" of Buddhist art.

The Mogao Grottoes' first carving was in 366, and with a contruction period spanning 16 dynasties, they are a summation of Buddhist art. The Mogao Grottoes are near an important city on the ancient Silk Road - Dunhuang, where you can see Crescent Spring (a miniature oasis in a pristine desert).

7. The Three Confucius Sites

Chinese: 三孔 sān kǒng /san kong/

Three confucius sites includes: Kong Family Mansion, Kong Family Mansion, Temple of Confucius

location: Qufu

Confucianism is a cornerstone of Chinese civilization. The Three Confucius Historical Sites (三孔 S an Kong) are all in Qufu, Shandong Province. Ancient architectural buildings, ancient stone tablets, and Confucius culture are the highlights.

The Kong Family Mansion was where the descendants of Confucius lived. It is huge and designed to reflect Confucian philosophy in its separation of areas for work, reception, and relaxation. The 480 rooms house a treasure of relics including imperial calligraphy.

The Cemetery of Confucius has become the graveyard of the Kong family, and more than 100,000 of Confucius' descendants are buried there. It is called Kong Lin ("Confucius' Forest").

Qufu Confucius Temple is the second largest scale ancient architectural complex in the world, after the Forbidden City. The temple was originally built as Confucius' house, and was changed into a temple to worship Confucius in the second year after his death. After that, extension of the temple continued, and today's 95,000 square meters was completed in the Yongzheng Period (1722-1735) of the Qing Dynasty.

Recommended Historical China Tours

Temple of Heaven, Beijing

There are some bestsellers including some of these historical sites:

You could always contact us to tailor your own unique tour of China's historical sites.

You Might Like to Read

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7 Top Historical Sites in China You Should Know

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China has a history of thousands of years, which gives it a lot of historical sites. The seven most significant are the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, and the Potala Palace, the Summer Place, the Mogao Grottoes, and the three Confucian sites. All of these are UNESCO World Heritage.

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Kids learn about the Silk Road trade route from Ancient China to Europe. Goods such as silk, porcelain, and salt make China rich.

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The Walled Shang Dynasty Cities of Ancient China

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The Walled Shang Dynasty Cities of Ancient China

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Shang Dynasty cities were the first historically documented urban settlements in China. The Shang Dynasty [c 1700-1050 B.C.E.] was the first Chinese dynasty to leave written records, and the idea and function of cities took on an elevated importance. The written records, mostly in the form of oracle bones, record the actions of the last nine Shang kings and describe some of the cities. The first of these historically-recorded rulers was Wu Ding, the twenty-first king of the dynasty.

The Shang rulers were literate, and like other early urban dwellers, the Shang employed a useful calendar and wheeled vehicles, and practiced metallurgy, including objects of cast bronze. They used bronze for such items as vessels for ritual offerings, wine, and weapons. And they resided and ruled from large, wealthy urban settlements.

Urban Capital Cities of Shang China

The early cities in the Shang (and the predecessor Xia dynasty) were imperial capitals-called palace-temple-cemetery complexes-that acted as the administrative, economic, and religious centers of government. These cities were built within fortification walls which provided defense. Later walled cities were county (hsien) and provincial capitals.

The earliest Chinese urban centers were located along the banks of the middle and lower courses of the Yellow River in northern China. Since the course of the Yellow River has changed, modern maps of the ruins of the Shang Dynasty locations are no longer on the river. At the time, some of the Shang were probably still pastoral nomads, but most were sedentary, small-village agriculturists, who kept domesticated animals and raised crops. There the already-large Chinese populations over-cultivated the originally fertile land.

Because China developed the techniques of using rivers for irrigation of their fields later than in the heavily trade-networked Near East and Egypt, fortified cities appeared in China more than a millennium earlier than in Mesopotamia or Egypt-at least, that's one theory. Besides irrigation per se, sharing ideas via trade routes was important to the development of civilization. Indeed, trade with tribes in the central Asian steppes may have brought one of the other components of urban culture, the wheeled chariot, to China.

Aspects of Urbanism

Defining what makes for a city in terms relevant for ancient China, as well as elsewhere, American archaeologist K.C. Chang wrote: "Political kingship, a religious system and hierarchy that coupled with it, segmentary lineages, economic exploitation of many by a few, technological specialization and sophisticated achievements in art, writing, and science."

The layout of the cities shared that of other ancient urban areas of Asia, similar to ones in Egypt and Mexico: a central core with the surrounding area divided into four regions, one for each of the cardinal directions.

The Shang City of Ao

The first clearly urban settlement of ancient China was called Ao. The archaeological ruins of Ao were discovered in 1950 C.E., so near the modern city of Chengchou (Zhengzhou) that the current city has hampered investigations. Some scholars, including Thorp, suggest that this location is really Bo (or Po), an earlier Shang capital than Ao, founded by the founder of the Shang Dynasty. Assuming it really is Ao, it was the 10th Shang Emperor, Chung Ting (Zhong Ding) (1562-1549 B.C.E.), who built it on the ruins of a Neolithic settlement dated to the Black pottery period.

Ao was a rectangularly-walled city with fortifications like those that had surrounded villages. Such walls are described as ramparts of pounded earth. The city of Ao extended 2 km (1.2) from north to south and 1.7 km (1 mi) from east to west, yielding an area of about 3.4 square kilometers (1.3 square miles), which was large for early China, but small compared to comparably dated Near Eastern cities. Babylon, for instance, was roughly 8 sq km (3.2 sq km). Chang says the walled area was roomy enough to include some cultivated land, although probably not the peasants. Factories for making bronze, bone, horn, and ceramic objects and foundries and what may have been a distillery were mostly located outside the walls.

The Great City Shang

The best-studied Shang Dynasty city is the 14th century B.C.E. city of Shang, which was built, according to tradition, by the Shang ruler Pan Keng, in 1384. Known as the Great City Shang (Da Yi Shang), the 30-40 sq km city may have been located about 100 mi (160 km) north of Ao and near Anyang north of the village of Hsiao T'un.

An alluvial plain created from Yellow River loess deposits surrounded Shang. Irrigated water from the Yellow River provided relatively reliable harvests in an otherwise semi-arid area. The Yellow River created a physical barrier on the north and east and part of the west. On the west was also a mountain range providing protection and, Chang says, probably hunting grounds and timber.

Fortifications and Other City-Typical Objects

Just because there were natural boundaries doesn't mean Shang was without a wall, although evidence of a wall has yet to be discovered. Within the central parts of the city were palaces, temples, cemeteries, and an archive. Houses were made with walls of pounded earth with light poles for roofs covered with rush matting and all plastered with mud. There were no grander structures than those made of wattle and daub, although Chang says there might have been two-story buildings.

The Great City Shang was the capital-at least for ancestor worship/ritual purposes-for 12 Shang Dynasty kings, unusually long for the Shang Dynasty which is said to have changed its capital many times. During the period of the 14 predynastic Shang lords, the capital changed eight times, and in the period of the 30 kings, seven times. The Shang (at least in the later period) practiced sacrifice and ancestor worship, with mortuary rituals. The Shang dynasty king was "theocrat": his power came from the people's belief that he could communicate with the high god Ti via his ancestors.

Small Earlier Chinese Cities

Recent archaeological excavations have determined that remains in Sichuan, previously thought to have been from the Han Dynasty, actually date from as early as c. 2500 B.C.E. Such sites were smaller complexes than the ones from the three dynasties but may have held a primary position among Chinese cities.

Updated by K. Kris Hirst and N.S. Gill

Lawler A. 2009. Beyond the Yellow River: How China Became China. Science 325(5943):930-935.

Lee YK. 2002. Building the Chronology of Early Chinese History. Asian Perspectives 41(1):15-42.

Liu L. 2009. State Emergence in Early China. Annual Review of Anthropology 38:217-232.

Murowchick RE, and Cohen DJ. 2001. Searching for Shang's Beginnings: Great City Shang, City Song, and Collaborative Archaeology in Shangqui, Henan. Review of Archaeology 22(2):47-61.

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The Walled Chinese Cities Along the Yellow River in the Shang Dynasty

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Shang Dynasty cities were the first historically documented urban settlements in China. The Shang Dynasty [c 1700-1050 B.C.E.] was the first Chinese dynasty to leave written records, and the idea and function of cities took on an elevated importance.

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Every city has a history, but here we focus on seven that are known for their history as ancient capitals of empires and kingdoms in the region of China and are popular tourist attractions.

"Four Ancient Capitals" (listed first) have been particularly influential in China's history. The remaining three have great historical interest and plenty of ancient sites, ruins and relics, but are only of regional importance historically.

1. Beijing - the Greatest Historic City

Beijing undoubtedly is the greatest historic city in China, the imperial capital for most of the last 1,000 years.

There are many world-class historic tourist sites. These include: the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City that was the imperial palace for the last 600 years of imperial rule .

2. Xi'an - the First Capital When China Was United

Xi'an is also a world-class historical city that retains more of its ancient character and atmosphere than Beijing. Xi'an was the first imperial capital of China in the brief Qin era (221-206 BC). It was also notably the capital of the Western Han (206 BC - 9 AD) and Tang (618-907) dynasties.

Historic sites include: the Terracotta Army, thousands of statues of soldiers and a necropolis for the Qin Emperor and the Ancient City Wall.

3. Nanjing - Ancient Capital from 265 AD

None can deny the imperial historicity of Nanjing. It was the ancient capital of the Jin (265-420) and other dynasties and also of the modern Republic of China before and after World War II when it became infamous for the Nanjing massacre.

Historical attractions include Sun Yatsen's Mausoleum where the man who is considered the founder of modern China is buried.

4. Luoyang - 13 Dynasties' Capital

Luoyang was another major capital of ancient China where various dynasties from the Eastern Zhou (1045-770 BC) to the Later Tang (923-937) presided.

Evidence of its imperial past include the Longmen Grottoes along the shore of a river where thousands of Buddhist and historical figures were carved.

5. Hangzhou - A Landscaped Imperial Retreat

Hangzhou is known in history first of all as an imperial landscaped retreat and garden for the emperors of Beijing, but it was also capital of China during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Prosperous Hangzhou maintains its imperial past in the West Lake suburbs.

Recommended tour: 1-Day Dragon Well Tea Culture & West Lake Tour

6. Anyang - A Capital 3,000 Years Ago

Anyang is special among China's ancient capitals since it was the earliest known capital.

During the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), Anyang presided over a large kingdom that was located between the Lower Yellow River and the Yangtze middle reaches (only 10% of modern China). Attractions include the Shang Dynasty ruins where large bronze pots and other artifacts are housed in a museum among the excavations in a big park area.

7. Kaifeng - The City of Calligraphy

Kaifeng was an imperial seat of power between 907 and 1127 including the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). It is known as the "City of Calligraphy" since several styles originated here.

Other Top Historical Capital Cities

Zhengzhou is often called China's 8th historical capital. About 3,600 years ago, Zhengzhou was the capital of the Shang Dynasty (1766 BC-1050 BC). During the following dynasties, it served as capital for four times. It is considered to be the cradle of China's civilization. The Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Shaolin Kung Fu that has been often portrayed in movies and a TV series, is in the mountains nearby.

Lhasa has been capital of the Kingdom of Tibet and all things Tibetan since around 640 AD. Top historical sites include the Potala Palace and its Buddhist monasteries and temples.

Suzhou is 2,500 years old and was the other beautifully landscaped city (besides Hangzhou) where emperors would traditionally go to relax. Truly an imperial garden city, you should see and experience gardens that are hundreds of years old such as the Humble Administrator's Garden.

Macau, a historic port, was one of the first cities to be reached by the West during the Age of Exploration 500 years ago, and the European influence is retained. Check out the Historic Center of Macau where Portuguese colonial buildings flank a Portuguese-style plaza.

Classic Trade Route Cities

The Three Pagodas of the ancient capital of the Dali Kingdom are more than 1,000 years old and may be the tallest pagodas surviving from the Tang Dynasty era.

Then there are classic Silk Road cities that linked Western trade with China 2,000 years ago. Dunhuang has the Mogao Grottoes and Yumen Pass; Jiayuguan has the Western End point of the Great Wall and the Great Wall on the Cliff; Turpan has the Karez Well System and the Jiaohe Ruin; and Kashgar has its old town and the traditional Sunday Bazaar.

In the south, Dali and Lijiang were important Tea Horse Road trade routes cities. The Tea Horse Road is often called the Southern Silk Road.

Recommended Ways to Tour China's Historical Cities

Our Beijing guide relates the history of the greatest imperial palace, the Forbidden City, whilst avoiding the crowds.

See our history tour suggestions below for inspiration:

1-Day Beijing Highlights Tour - Visit the Forbidden City and the Great Wall at your pace.

Riches of China Tour - We can tailor-make our 13-day Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai itinerary to included as many historic cities as required.

Beyond the Golden Triangle Tour - Our 9-day Beijing, Xi'an, Pingyao, and Shanghai tour plan is flexible: visit your choice of attractions without missing the must-sees.

Or you could just fill in a 4-minute Create-My-Trip form with your interests and requirements, and we will send you a quote and proposed itinerary within 24 hours.

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The Top 7 Historic Cities in China: China's 7 Ancient Capitals

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Every city has a history, but here we focus on seven that are known for their history as ancient capitals of empires and kingdoms in the region of China and are popular tourist attractions. "Four Ancient Capitals" (listed first) have been particularly influential in China's history.

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