Book Extract
(206bce-220ce) with its successive
capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang, as
well as its thriving coastal maritime
cities such as Fuzhou. Later, under
the Tang (618-970), Chang’an
(modern-day Xi’an) was the capital
and it had a population (within and
outside the walls) of about two
million by the eighth century. The
city’s symmetrical layout was used
to organize specialized and orderly
functional neighborhoods, the
demarcation of which arose out of
by then deeply-rooted Chinese ideas
about the spiritual efficacy of spatial
arrangements and alignments—ideas
that were diffused to various
degrees throughout East Asia.
Ancient China’s urbanization was
such that in Tang-dynasty China
there were more than ten cities with
populations of 300,000-plus. During
the later Song dynasty (960-1279)