Xuchang is in Henan, in Central China.
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Henan · City Guide
Xuchang, Cao Cao's Capital and the World's Wig Factory.
Overview
Why Go
In 196 Cao Cao moved the Han emperor here and ran the empire from Xuchang until 220. The chancellery site, the drill ground and the tower where Guan Yu was housed are all in or near the city.
Xuchang manufactures a very large share of the wigs and hair extensions sold worldwide, almost all of it under other brands. It is the least visible major export industry in China and it is concentrated in one prefecture.
Jun ware, one of the five great Song kiln traditions, uses a copper-bearing glaze that changes colour unpredictably in the firing. Two pots from the same kiln come out different, which is the point and the risk.
Shenhou is the one Jun kiln town where the fires have not gone out in a thousand years. Its seven-li street is porcelain shops and ordinary houses together, with walls and paving built from broken ware.
Yanling grows nursery stock and flowers at national scale, supplying street trees and garden plants across China. In April the whole county is in flower because that is what the fields are.
See
A long street of Jun ware shops, working kilns and houses whose walls are built from waste pots, in the hills at Yuzhou. Studios throw and glaze in the open. Half a day.
Built over the excavated Northern Song imperial kiln at Yuzhou, with the furnace remains below and a sequence of glazes above. Go before Shenhou. Ninety minutes.
A reconstructed compound in the city centre on the site of the chancellery, with exhibitions on the Xuchang years. It is a rebuild rather than a ruin, and it explains the period well. Ninety minutes.
The tower where Guan Yu is said to have lodged, and the stone bridge west of the city where the novel places his parting from Cao Cao. The bridge is real; the scene is fiction. An hour for both.
Nursery fields, greenhouses and display gardens in the county that supplies much of China's landscaping stock. Ideal in April when the fields flower. Half a day.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Xuchang.
Eat
A banquet of thirteen small bowls, mostly steamed and stewed pork, tofu and vegetables, served in a fixed order at weddings and festivals in Yuzhou. Order it for a table.
Mutton and bone boiled until the broth goes white, served with sliced meat, coriander and a flatbread to tear into it. Winter food, sold from before dawn, and heavier than the southern versions.
Sesame ground on a stone mill and separated by hand rather than pressed hot, which keeps the aroma. Changge workshops sell straight from the mill and the smell reaches the street.
Chrysanthemums grown in the nursery county and dried whole, opening again in the glass. Drunk plain or with rock sugar and goji. Autumn harvest, sold by the flower rather than the gram.
Do
Nobody knows what colours are coming out until the door opens, which is why Shenhou potters make an occasion of it. Ask a studio when the next firing finishes and come back for it.
The main street runs for a couple of kilometres through shops, workshops and ordinary houses. Look at the walls: broken pots laid flat, a thousand years of failures used as building material.
A small stone bridge with a huge amount of fiction attached to it. Read the tablet, then remember that the parting scene is from a fourteenth-century novel about third-century events.
The hair products belt runs on workshops and factories that take visits by appointment rather than walk-in. It is worth arranging if visitors want to see an export industry that nobody advertises.
When
Yanling in flower, mild weather and the ideal conditions for the kiln town. The strongest window of the year.
Hot and humid on the plain. The museums and the kiln workshops are the workable options and the medicine fair runs at Yuzhou in the spring and autumn.
Dry and clear with chrysanthemums coming in. The other good window and the quietest at the Three Kingdoms sites.
Cold and grey, which is mutton soup season. Kilns fire year round and the shops are warmer than the street.
Explore More
Xuchang is in Henan, in Central China.
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