Kaifeng: The Northern Song Dynasty’s Lost Capital

In the year 1127 CE, the Jurchen Jin army captured the Northern Song capital Bianjing (汴京) — today’s Kaifeng — and carried the Emperor Huizong and his son north as prisoners. The dynasty relocated south to Hangzhou. The city that had been the most populous and commercially sophisticated urban centre in the medieval world was abandoned to the floods of the Yellow River.

Twenty-first century Kaifeng is a mid-sized Henan city that has never quite recovered the grandeur of its Song dynasty apogee. But what survives — fragmentary but genuine — makes it one of the most historically resonant destinations in central China.

The Northern Song Legacy

Qingming Riverside Garden (清明上河园)

The theme park recreation of the famous scroll “Along the River During Qingming Festival” (清明上河图) — the Northern Song court painter Zhang Zeduan’s 5-metre-long depiction of Kaifeng’s commercial and social life — is simultaneously the most visited attraction in Kaifeng and the most controversial.

The park recreates buildings, bridges, and market scenes from the scroll using Song dynasty architectural specifications. Performances of Song dynasty music, opera, and martial arts occur throughout the day.

The original scroll (in the Palace Museum, Beijing) is the most detailed documentary image of any medieval Chinese city; studying it before visiting Kaifeng transforms what you see in the modern city from ruins into legible fragments of the scroll’s urban fabric.

Admission: ¥120.

Iron Pagoda (铁塔)

Despite its name, the Iron Pagoda (铁塔) is a 13-storey glazed tile pagoda built in 1049 CE — its iron-grey and rust-red glazed brick exterior gives it the appearance of cast iron. At 54 metres, it is the most intact large Northern Song structure in China. The pagoda can be climbed (¥30 additional); each storey reveals progressively more elaborate relief tiles depicting Buddhist figures.

Standing here: The pagoda has survived 10 Yellow River floods, multiple occupations, and earthquakes; it was above water level when Kaifeng’s lower city was submerged. It is the most direct contact with the Song dynasty city that the modern visitor can have.

Po Ta Pagoda (繁塔)

Earlier than the Iron Pagoda (977 CE), only 3 of the original 7 storeys remain (the upper 4 were demolished during the Ming dynasty to prevent the pagoda from “overshadowing the palace”), but the exterior surface is covered in extraordinarily detailed glazed tiles depicting the entire Buddhist pantheon. Less visited than the Iron Pagoda; more intimate.

Kaifeng Jewish Community

Kaifeng’s Jewish community is one of the most remarkable and poorly understood episodes in Chinese history. A community of Jewish merchants settled in Kaifeng during the Northern Song dynasty (approximately 9th–11th century CE), built a synagogue in 1163, and maintained a distinct community identity — speaking Chinese but observing Jewish law — for approximately 700 years before gradually assimilating in the 19th century.

The Seven Surnames (赵、李、艾、张、石、金、高): The descendants of the community — approximately 500–1,000 people in modern Kaifeng — use the seven Chinese surnames assigned to the original Jewish settlers. Some individuals maintain awareness of their Jewish heritage; others have fully assimilated into Han culture.

The stone steles: Two stone steles from the 17th century synagogue, rediscovered in the 19th century, are held at a Kaifeng museum. They record the community’s history and religious practice in Chinese.

This is one of the few places in the world where the encounter between Jewish and Confucian civilization lasted centuries and ended in complete cultural merger.

Night Markets

Kaifeng’s night market culture traces a direct lineage to the Northern Song dynasty, when Bianjing was one of the first cities to lift curfews and allow commercial activity at night — a revolutionary development in Chinese urban history.

Gulou Night Market (鼓楼夜市): Operating from approximately 17:00 to midnight, the Drum Tower area becomes a dense concentration of food stalls serving Kaifeng specialities:

• Steamed Buns with Chrysanthemum (菊花饼): Kaifeng is the “chrysanthemum city” of China; the yellow chrysanthemum appears in local food as well as in the famous autumn chrysanthemum exhibitions.
• Kaifeng Pan-fried Buns (桶子鸡): The cylindrical barrel-roasted chicken is a Kaifeng street food tradition dating to the Song dynasty.
• Crispy Tofu (炸灌肠): Fried intestine casings filled with starch paste — a distinctly northern Chinese street food tradition that Kaifeng does exceptionally well.

Practical Information

Getting there: High-speed train from Zhengzhou (30 min), Luoyang (1.5 hours). Kaifeng is easily reached from Zhengzhou international airport.

Best combined with: A Henan heritage circuit combining Kaifeng, Luoyang (Longmen Grottoes), and Dengfeng (Shaolin Temple) covers the most important Henan destinations in 5–6 days.

Kaifeng teaches a lesson that all of China’s history demonstrates: wealth, sophistication, and cultural achievement do not protect cities from geology and politics. The Song dynasty’s most sophisticated city is now best accessed through a painting.