Henan's New Social Media Darling: Neither Luoyang Nor Kaifeng

Xuchang, a "fourth-tier city" adjacent to Zhengzhou with a population of just over 4 million.

If you visit Xuchang for the first time and ask a taxi driver about its attractions, the answers will be surprisingly consistent: Three Kingdoms relics and Pang Donglai. These represent Xuchang's ancient and modern facets, respectively.

Eighteen hundred years ago, scholars from Yingchuan, emerging from Xuchang, wielded their horsetail whisks in philosophical debates, epitomizing the Wei-Jin elegance. By the Northern Song Dynasty, ceramic artisans mastered the art of using clay and metal to capture the fleeting azure after rain, taming air and flame to record the ever-changing rosy clouds, leaving us the unparalleled treasure of Jun porcelain.

Jun kiln porcelain, as brilliantly colorful as the sunset.

With the viral fame of Pang Donglai supermarket online, Xuchang proves it hasn't rested on its historical laurels. Six out of ten wigs used in the fashion industry worldwide are produced in Xuchang. The emerging lab-grown diamond industry, matching natural diamonds in quality while slashing prices by over 90%, has made this once-exclusive luxury accessible to ordinary households.

Xuchang, this treasure of a small city in Henan, has been leading global trends from ancient times to the present.

As is well known, Henan lies at the heart of the Central Plains, the center of heaven and earth. Xuchang, in turn, sits precisely at the center of Henan. This geographical centrality destined Xuchang to be "central" in every sense. The early Qing geographer Gu Zuyu summarized Xuchang's location in his *Essentials of Historical Geography*: "From the perspective of the realm, Henan is the central land; from Henan's perspective, Xuzhou (Xuchang) is again the central land."

Xuchang's centrality isn't just geographical but also climatic. Despite being in the relatively arid Central Plains, Xuchang is traversed by rivers like the Ying, Shiliang, and Qingyi, even forming two major lakes: West Lake and Autumn Lake.

Thanks to its dense water network, Xuchang is filled with lotus plantings, earning it the nickname "Lotus City." The Northern Song poet Mei Yaochen once wrote in *Viewing West Lake from Xuchang City*: "Shorelines deepened by overnight rain, grasses merging with flat fields, summer trees still thinly shaded, red lotuses not yet in full bloom."

The rivers crossing Xuchang also brought immense convenience to water transport. The city "controls the west's Ru and Luo rivers, draws from the east's Huai and Si, with boats and carts converging, making transport easy." The Ru River from western Henan's mountains and the Luo from the Qinling depths meander through the fertile Central Plains, with the Luoyang Basin being a key part of Central Plains culture since pre-Qin times.

Photo/Tuchong Creativity, Photographer/Lv Chaofeng

Topographically, Xuchang is mostly endless plains, with only minor low hills in the northwest. This "wide and flat" terrain cemented its role in land transport. Today, Xuchang boasts a "川"-shaped rail network of the Beijing-Guangzhou, Zhengzhou-Hefei, and Zhengzhou-Chongqing high-speed lines, plus major national projects like the South-North Water Diversion and West-East Gas Pipeline.

Schematic map of Xuchang's transportation hub.

Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport, about 50 km from downtown Xuchang, even built an off-site terminal next to Xuchang East Station. Passengers can complete check-in and baggage drop there before taking a shuttle bus to the airport. This "unremarkable" fourth-tier city offers "air-rail intermodal" convenience still unavailable in many metropolises.

The "treasure small city" of five capitals and four hometowns,

How many historical labels does it bear?

Fans of *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* will recognize "Xuchang." Of the novel's 120 chapters, 52 mention Xuchang. Among China's 300+ Three Kingdoms cultural sites, 80+ are in Xuchang, rightly earning it the title of China's Three Kingdoms Cultural Hometown.

Xuchang's Spring and Autumn Tower, where Guan Yu allegedly read *Spring and Autumn Annals* at night.

In 196 AD, the warlord Cao Cao, advised by strategist Xun Yu, "held the emperor to command the lords," welcoming Emperor Xian to Xu County. For the next 25 years, Xuchang was the undisputed political, economic, and cultural center of northern China. In 221 AD, Emperor Cao Pi renamed Xu County to Xuchang ("Xu's Prosperity") as "Wei's foundation flourished in Xu."

Xuchang witnessed China's transition from the late Han to the Three Kingdoms era. "Hearing of Three Kingdoms tales, one always longs for Xuchang" best captures its history. Though Cao Pi soon moved the capital to Luoyang, Xuchang remained one of Cao Wei's "Five Capitals," where generations of rulers constructed palaces and gardens.

Yuzhou City, located in the northwest of present-day Xuchang, was known by a far more illustrious name at the time: Yingchuan. Xun Yu, Xun You, Guo Jia, Xizhi Cai, Zhong Yao, and nearly all the civil officials and strategists who followed Cao Cao in his early "entrepreneurial" days hailed from Yingchuan, making it the "premier think tank" of the Cao Wei regime.

Even after the Sima clan replaced Wei to establish Jin, and during the Eastern Jin Dynasty after the southward migration of the nobility, Yingchuan's talents continued to wield pivotal influence in national politics. Chen Qiu pioneered the "Nine-Rank System," the origin of the ancient official rankings from first to ninth grade, setting the foundational "rules of the game" for aristocratic families dominating court politics for nearly a millennium. In the early Eastern Jin Dynasty, Yu Liang, entrusted with Emperor Ming's dying decree, co-governed with Wang Dao, becoming a key decision-maker in state affairs.

It is no exaggeration to say that the elegance and influence of Yingchuan's scholars shaped the course of Chinese history for nearly three centuries since the Wei and Jin dynasties.

Five Capitals and Four Hometowns—how many treasures lie within?

The Wei Capital and the Hometown of Three Kingdoms culture are the brightest calling cards of Xuchang, this small fourth-tier city. But Xuchang, known as the "Five Capitals and Four Hometowns," holds far more treasures than just these.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, Xuchang, adjacent to the "Eastern Capital" Kaifeng, held a crucial role as a supporting capital city. Yuzhou, in particular, produced Jun porcelain, one of the "Five Great Kilns of the Northern Song," earning it the title "Jun Capital." As the saying goes, "Better a shard of Jun porcelain than ten thousand strings of coins" (the same applies to Ru ware), highlighting its extraordinary value.

How many treasures are hidden in the Five Capitals and Four Hometowns?

The most unique feature of Jun porcelain is the magical "kiln transformation" during firing, a chemical marvel catalyzed by temperature. Copper-infused glaze, subjected to high-temperature kiln firing, undergoes complex redox reactions, resulting in hues of blue, purple, or red: purple veiled in blue, blue tinged with red, red flecked with white, white shimmering with blue, blue interlaced with green... "One color enters the kiln; ten thousand colors emerge." The interplay of shades is fluid and unpredictable.

Xuchang's pride leads the world!

The viral fame of Pang Donglai online boils down to one reason: service brimming with love and humanity.

Across social media, Pang Donglai's "devilishly" meticulous service details have won countless admirers, with its food counters rivaling gourmet plazas. Even more remarkable is that Pang Donglai's service is bidirectional—delighting customers while also making employees feel deeply valued.

Pang Donglai's dazzling fruit section.

Thirty days of annual leave, fines for overtime, Tuesday closures... and perhaps the nation's only "Employee Grievance Award"! On June 20 this year, a customer loudly berated a Pang Donglai employee. Within five days, Pang Donglai issued an eight-page investigative report and, upon learning the employee had resisted unreasonable demands, awarded them a 5,000-yuan grievance bonus.

But Xuchang's pride extends far beyond Pang Donglai. Among China's top 500 private enterprises, Xuchang claims four, ranking first in the province. The standout among these industries is hair products.

Xuchang, a single city, produces 60% of the world's wigs, rightfully earning the title "Wig Capital." Many Xuchang aunties may never have left their hometown, but their wigs travel globally: Beyoncé, Rihanna, even former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama are loyal fans of Xuchang wigs.

Xuchang: The wig capital leading fashion trends.

In high-end manufacturing with core technology, Xuchang also excels. Pristine diamonds, symbols of love, can cost tens of thousands for just one carat (0.2g). Chemically, however, diamonds are just carbon—no different from coal in a furnace.

Rearranging carbon atoms at the structural level to turn coal into diamonds is no fantasy. Xuchang is at the forefront of this "alchemy." The Yellow River Group, based in Xuchang, is the world's largest producer of lab-grown diamonds. As insiders say, the difference between lab-grown and natural diamonds is like "river water versus well water"—indistinguishable.

In just two or three years, Xuchang's lab-grown diamonds have dropped to less than a tenth the cost of natural ones. Soon, this "forever" romance may become affordable for the masses.

Text Editor | Feitian Yimian

This article is original content from [Di Dao Feng Wu].