Henan

史History & character

Henan is the cradle of Chinese civilisation. The earliest dynasty for which we have written records — the Shang (c. 1600–1046 BCE) — had its later capital at Yin (modern Anyang), where the oracle bone inscriptions used to write the language we call "Old Chinese" were unearthed. Luoyang served as a national capital under thirteen dynasties spanning more than 1,500 years. The Longmen Grottoes — UNESCO listed — contain over 100,000 Buddhist sculptures carved into limestone cliffs from the 5th to 10th centuries. The Shaolin Temple, founded in the 5th century at the foot of Songshan, is the spiritual home of Chan Buddhism and Chinese martial arts.

The province's flat agricultural plain — the Central Plain proper — was the most populous and productive region of imperial China. It was also frequently devastated. The Yellow River has flooded catastrophically dozens of times in recorded history, and Henan suffered some of the worst losses in the 1938 dyke-breaching, the 1942–43 famine, and the 1950s mass-mobilisation projects.

Modern Henan is one of the largest provinces by population (roughly 100 million) but mid-table on per-capita income. Zhengzhou is a logistics and electronics hub — home to Foxconn's largest iPhone plant — and increasingly a HSR-network gateway between north and south.