Zhōngyuán

The Zhongyuan, or Central Plains, are the middle and lower Yellow River country centered on Kaifeng and Luoyang, the historical heartland of Huaxia civilization and seat of more than twenty dynastic capitals. Its people speak Central Plains Mandarin, recorded in the Yuan rime book Zhongyuan Yinyun of 1324, and the same dialect group reaches southern Shandong.

Kaifeng, capital of the Northern Song until 1127, entered the Ming era in 1368 as the dynasty's secondary Northern Capital, then in 1378 became the capital of Henan province. The city lay on the Yellow River floodplain, where five great floods struck between 1375 and 1416.

In 1642 a Ming army cut the dikes to break Li Zicheng's siege, submerging Kaifeng so that only 30,000 of its 370,000 people remained; rebuilding began in 1662. Through these disasters the plain stayed the agricultural core of China, its grain feeding the Grand Canal fleets that supplied Beijing.