China's capital has moved so often that its cities are named by compass point
Beijing means northern capital and Nanjing southern capital, and that is no accident. Tradition counts five great historic capitals of China, each tagged with a direction: Xi'an in the west, Luoyang in the centre, Nanjing in the south, Kaifeng in the east and Beijing in the north. Dozens more cities have taken a turn.
Each of the big five belongs to particular dynasties. Xi'an, known in different eras as Fenghao, Chang'an and Daxing, served the Western Zhou, Western Han and Tang. Luoyang was the seat of the Eastern Zhou and Eastern Han. Nanjing, once Jiankang and later Yingtian, hosted the Eastern Jin, the Southern Dynasties and the early Ming. Kaifeng ruled under the Northern Song, and Beijing under the Ming and Qing, as it does under the People's Republic today.
Beijing's own history is a chain of renamings. As Ji it was capital of the state of Yan from the 11th century BC. The Liao used it as a secondary capital, the Jurchen Jin called it Zhongdu, the central capital, and under the Mongol Yuan dynasty it became Dadu, the great capital, known in Mongolian and Turkic as Khanbaliq, the city of the Khan. Marco Polo wrote it as Cambuluc. The Ming made it capital from 1403, the Beiyang government from 1912 to 1927, and the People's Republic since 1949.
Go back further and the map widens. Anyang was the Shang dynasty's capital at its height, called Yin by the Zhou. Datong ruled the Northern Wei from 398 to 493, and a district of modern Harbin was the Jin dynasty's upper capital from 1115. Balasagun, now in Kyrgyzstan, was capital of the Western Liao from 1134 to 1218. The Qing even kept a summer capital at Chengde from 1703 to 1820.
Wartime and upheaval produced temporary capitals. Chengdu hosted Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms and a string of regional kingdoms after it. Chongqing, once capital of the ancient state of Ba, sheltered the Nationalist government through the war with Japan from 1937 to 1945, while Changchun, renamed Xinjing or new capital, served the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Usually, though, only the capitals of unified dynasties are remembered.
Source: Historical capitals of China
