Chang'an
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- For the town administered by the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China, see Chang'an Town.
Chang'an Template:Audio (Template:Zh-stpw) is the ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in China. "Chang'an" means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese. (During the short-lived Xin Dynasty, the name was changed to 常安 -- pronounced the same way, but with the meaning of "Frequent Peace" instead; after the fall of Xin in 23, the name was changed back.) In the Ming Dynasty, the city's name was changed to Xi'an (西安), meaning "Western Peace", which is what the city is called today.
The site of Chang'an of the Han Dynasty was located in northwest of today's Xi'an, Shaanxi (陕西). Another site of Chang'an during the Tang Dynasty, includes the area inside the walls of Xi'an, small parts of eastern, western and major part of southern suburbs of modern Xi'an city. It is 8 times as big as the Xi'an city in the Ming Dynasty, which was reconstructed on the basis of the imperial city of the Sui and Tang dynasties. Chang'an was one of the largest and the most populous cities in the world.
Han Dynasty Capital
The site of the Han capital was located 5 km northwest of modern Xi'an. As the capital of the Western Han Dynasty, it was the political, economic and cultural center of China, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, and a cosmopolitan metropolis comparable with the greatest cities of the contemporaneous Roman Empire.
It was a consumer city, a city whose existence was not primarily predicated upon manufacturing and trade, but rather boasted such a large population because of its role as the political capital of China.
The construction of the city can be divided into 3 periods over more than 90 years. The Emperor Gao of Han Liu Bang decided to build the palaces before the city walls. In 202 BC, he repaired the Xingle Palace (兴乐宫) of the Qin Dynasty and renamed it to Changle Palace (长乐宫). Two years later, a new palace called Weiyang (未央宫) was constructed. In 195 BC, his son, Emperor Hui of Han began the construction of the walls of Chang'an and finished them in September of 191 BC. Emperor Hui, Emperor Wu of Han then built several palaces in the city. At that time, Zhang Qian went to the west as a diplomat of the Empire of Han. Chang'an city became a bridge between Asia and Europe as the eastern end of the famous Silk Road. In 2 AD, more than 240,000 people lived in Chang'an in a urban area of nearly 40 km²;. After the Western Han, the Eastern Han government made Luoyang the capital and renamed Chang'an to Xijing (Western Capital). After the Eastern Han, many dynasties regarded Chang'an city as the capital. In 582, Emperor Wen of Sui Dynasty selected a place in the southeast of it to build a new capital which he called Daxing (renamed as Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty). The Chang'an city of the Han Dynasty was abandoned.