Ānyáng

Anyang lies in northern Henan beside the Huan River, where the Taihang foothills drop to the plain. Around 1300 BC King Pangeng moved the Shang capital to Yin, on the river bank just northwest of the later city, and the kings who ruled from here for 254 years left the oracle bones and bronzes that were later dug up in thousands. The town took its name Anyang from the Warring States, when Zhao and Wei fought over it.

In 1192 the Jin raised the prefecture here to Zhangde, a name the city kept under the Yuan and the Ming. In 1425 the Ming prince of Zhao, Zhu Gaosui, took up his fief at Zhangde. The five-storey brick pagoda of Tianning Temple, built in 952 under the Later Zhou, flares outwards at the top like an umbrella, an uncommon form, and it stood over the town through the Yuan and Ming.