Zhengzhou
— — a Shang capital, three and a half thousand years under it.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Henan province, on the south bank of the Yellow River where it leaves the Loess Plateau and turns toward the sea. Beneath the modern city run the rammed-earth ramparts of Shang, the bronze-age dynasty that put a wall here around 1600 BCE. The Shaolin Temple sits eighty kilometres west in the Songshan mountains, and the bullet trains north and south meet at the city's two stations.
Zhengzhou, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan, the central province of China, situated on the south bank of the Yellow River as it leaves the Loess Plateau. The metropolitan population exceeds twelve million. It serves as one of the country's principal railway junctions, where the north-south Jingguang line meets the east-west Longhai line. The Shang-dynasty city walls beneath the modern centre date to around 1600 BCE, making this one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban sites in East Asia and one of the eight ancient capitals of China.
The ramparts of Shang Zhengzhou form a rectangle nearly seven kilometres in circumference, the surviving sections rising as much as ten metres above modern street level. Built of rammed earth in successive layers, they enclosed the palaces and bronze foundries of an early Shang capital, predating the better-known Anyang by perhaps two centuries. Excavations beginning in 1950 recovered the city's foundries and a hoard of ritual bronzes now held at the Henan Museum. The walls were designated a national heritage site in 1961.
Zhengzhou East railway station is one of China's largest high-speed rail hubs, with bullet trains to Beijing in two and a half hours and to Xi'an in under two. The Shang city walls run through the eastern and southern districts of the old town, walkable from Erqi Square. The Henan Museum, free with advance booking, holds the Shang bronzes and the ritual jade. Shaolin Temple lies eighty kilometres west in the Songshan range; day buses leave hourly from Zhengzhou bus station.