This history of China’s imperial capital cities reveals “a picaresque chronicle of dynastic succession and court intrigue” across millennia (Publishers Weekly). Throughout the long history of Imperial China, emperors designed their capital cities in ways that reveal the heart of their dynasty. The ley lines of these cities reveal religious preoccupations, while the design of important buildings tells us much about the cultural influences of the period. The Shang Emperor of the third century B.C. made obsessive—and ultimately fatal—attempts to engage the Immortals with cosmologically pleasing urban planning. Meanwhile, the Tang capital at Chang'an betrays the striking creativity and cultural receptiveness that earmark the era as a literary and artistic golden age. And the Forbidden City of fifteenth century Beijing still stands as testament to Ming dynasty architectural virtuosity. Arthur Cotterell provides an inside view of the rich array of characters, political and ideological tensions, and technological genius that defined the imperial cities of China, as each in turn is uncovered, explored, and celebrated. The oldest continuous civilization in existence today stands to become the most influential.

Chinese Imperial City Planning is the first synthesis of what is known from textual and archaeological evidence about every Chinese imperial capital, from earliest times to the present. It explains the fundamental architectural principles and visual characteristics of imperial planning in China and shows how these features are related to the Chinese idea of rulership. The volume also reconstructs the 3,500-year-old history of imperial planning using sources such as resident descriptions, travel accounts, official Chinese court records, and the most recent archaeological and scholarly studies. The extensive documentation provides students with a standard source of reference from which to embark on further research on Chinese urban planning.

Drawing on a vast array of scholarship, this pioneering text illustrates how profoundly astronomical phenomena shaped ancient Chinese civilization.

The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.

This book employs textual and archaeological material to reconstruct the various features of daily life in ancient China.

In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia. The Qin and Han constitute the "classical period" of Chinese history--a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity. The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism--events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.

Ye is a historical Chinese city built in 659 BC and burned down to the ground in AD 580. The book investigates the characteristics of the city’s layout and its deep influence on the urban construction in East Asia since the 6th century AD. By studying archaeological findings and historical documents, the author illustrates the historical significance of Ye city, both as capital for six dynasties over 370 years of ancient Chinese history and as a paragon of East Asian capital planning. Ye serves as an exemplary model for famous capitals in later dynasties of imperial China, such as Beijing and Xi’an. Its influence also extends to other East Asian capitals, including Seoul in Korea, Kyoto in Japan, and Hanoi in Vietnam. Comparing the archetypical structure of Ye city and the features of its East Asian descendants, the author encapsulates the lineage of capital city development across medieval East Asia and uncovers a philosophy of construction that rests upon traditional Chinese thinking. The book will be an essential read for scholars and general readers interested in East Asian heritage, urbanology, and architecture, as well as a useful reference for urban planners willing to learn from historical experience.