Yangzhou

Often listed among China's four great gardens, this salt merchant's private retreat is renowned for rockeries that evoke spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Often hailed as the finest late-Qing garden, Heyuan blends Chinese and Western styles, with a double-deck walkway likened to an early flyover and a stage set on water.

Merchants have thronged this lively street beside the Grand Canal for a millennium, and today it is lined with salt merchants' mansions and heritage brands like Xiefuchun.

Founded in the Liu Song period of the Southern Dynasties, Daming Temple is where the Tang monk Jianzhen presided before sailing to Japan to spread the Vinaya school.

Part of Yangzhou's history: Building of Eastern Luoyang. Second Sui emperor, Yangdi, who built the eastern capital at Luoyang and the Grand Canal, failed in three wars against Goguryeo, and was strangled in a mutiny at Jiangdu

Part of Yangzhou's history: Jianzhen's Eastward Voyages. Tang Vinaya master from Yangzhou who reached Japan on his sixth attempt in 753, blind by then, and founded the Toshodaiji in Nara

Building of Eastern Luoyang

Emperor Yang built the eastern capital at Luoyang with palaces, wards, markets, and canals linking the Sui realm north and south.

Between 605 and 618, Sui Yangdi ordered work on the Tongji, Yongji, Han, and Jiangnan canals and made several visits to Jiangdu.

Jianzhen's Eastward Voyages

After five failed crossings, Jianzhen reached Japan, established Buddhist ordination, and transmitted Tang medicine, architecture, and arts at Nara.

After five failed crossings, Jianzhen set sail a sixth time in 753, landed at Satsuma in Japan early in 754, and then transmitted Buddhist ordination at Todaiji in the capital.

During his late-Tang service in regional offices, Du Mu was closely associated with Yangzhou; his poem to Han Chuo preserved the famous Twenty-Four Bridges line as a later cultural image of the city.