Luoyang

For much of the first millennium Luoyang was the eastern capital, and the Tang empress Wu Zetian ruled from here. The city she knew is under the modern one, but the Buddhas she paid for are still in the cliffs at Longmen, twelve kilometres south, where the Yi River cuts through limestone and a hundred thousand figures look out over the water.

The old walled town in the east has a night market, a rebuilt gate and the restaurants that serve the water banquet, a Tang-era procession of soups. The Sui and Tang palace site has been excavated and partly rebuilt in the centre, with the Yingtianmen gate lit at night.

April is peony month. The city has grown them for fifteen hundred years and every park is full of them and of visitors. Autumn is the quiet alternative.

Luoyang Longmen station is on the high-speed line, south of the centre and a short ride from the grottoes: Xi'an in about an hour and a half, Zhengzhou 40 minutes, Beijing three and a half to four hours. The older Luoyang station in the north serves slower trains. Beijiao (LYA) airport, ten kilometres north, has a few domestic flights; most people come by train.

The water banquet (shuixi): twenty-four courses, most of them soups, from a Tang recipe; Zhenbutong on the old town's main street is the famous house and a half-portion set is enough. Every morning, beef soup or bufan soup with flatbread torn in. Jiang noodles in fermented soy-milk broth, hulatang pepper soup, and pot-stickers around the night market.