Taiyuan is an ancient city. I visited it on my tour of Shanxi. Unfortunately, the ancient parts of Taiyuan are all gone.
That said, Shanxi Museum in Taiyuan is a 5-star highlight.
The quality of the exhibits from the Spring and Autumn period, the Warring States period, and the Northern Wei dynasty is exquisite.
The Chinese characters on stones excavated show that Chinese writing was already well developed from the Zhou dynasty. This helped create a 5,000-year-old civilisation with a highly literate class of scholars and numerous high-quality craftsmen.
Shanxi means “mountain’s west” or “west of the mountains,” as it is west of the Taihang Mountains.
In 690, Wu Zetian of the Tang dynasty designated Taiyuan as the Northern Capital (北都; Běidū), one of the three capitals, along with Chang’an and Luoyang.
Li Bai in one poem, wrote, “The king of the heaven has three capitals; the Northern capital is one of them.”
There is a 2015 book on Wu Zetian—Emperor Wu Zhao by N Harry Rothschild. This is the most recent book in English on her. It has good reviews.
Wu Zhao (624-705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, is the only woman to have ruled China as emperor over the course of its 5,000-year history.
Lwh @ Shanxi March 2025