Luoyang served as capital to more dynasties than any other Chinese city — thirteen by the usual count, from the Eastern Zhou through the Tang — and its greatest sights are all conversations with that past: the Longmen Grottoes, where half a millennium of carvers turned two river cliffs into a Buddhist gallery; the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist monastery on Chinese soil; and every April, the peonies, the flower this city has loved for some fourteen centuries. It is an easy, grid-plan city to visit now, with high-speed rail, its own metro, and a soup culture worth planning mornings around.
