Genesis

In 1045 Bce, King Wu of Zhou marched east with a coalition army to meet the main force of the Shang. At the Battle of Muye (west of Huixian, Henan), ¹ he won a decisive victory against the enemy, which led to the collapse of the Shang dynasty. On his way to the battleground, King Wu had passed through an area, later known as Luoyang, which inspired him to make the following statement:

From the north shore of the Luo to the north shore of the Yi, the land is settled and without obstruction. Here was a Xia settlement. If I might gaze south to the Santu [Mountain] (in Songxian, Henan), and north to the city walls near the Yue (the Taihang Mountains), if I might look back to the Youhe (Huang River) and look out to the Luo and Yi – this would not be far from a Heavenly Residence. ²

What King Wu envisioned was an ideal dwelling place for the Son of Heaven, a capital, in an area which his brother the Duke of Zhou referred to as the “center of the land” (tuzhong) (axis mundi), “great hub” (dacou), ³ or “center of all under heaven” (tianxia zhi zhong). ⁴ For King Cheng, King Wu’s successor, Luoyang was a place like no other that allowed him to receive guests from the four quarters. ⁵ More than 800 years later, the Han adviser Lou Jing, who opposed the idea of locating the Han capital in Luoyang, admitted that it was “considered the center of all under heaven so that the local lords from the four quarters, when fulfilling their duties to provide tribute, found that the distance to the central court was equalized.” ⁶ So the strategic importance of the place lay in its easy access to other key areas, not in its great productive power nor its defensibility.