Kaifeng

Kaifeng was the largest city on Earth during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127)—a million residents in an era when London had 20,000 and Paris had 30,000. The painting 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival,' China's most famous scroll artwork, depicts Kaifeng at its zenith: a bustling commercial metropolis with restaurants, entertainment districts, and a market economy that included the world's first paper currency. For two centuries, Kaifeng was what New York and London are today—the center of global commerce and culture.

The city's decline was hydraulic. The Yellow River, which passes just north of Kaifeng, has flooded the city at least seven times catastrophically since 1000 AD. Each flood buried the previous city under meters of silt, creating an archaeological layer cake—Song Dynasty ruins lie 8-10 meters below the current street level. The 1642 flood, deliberately triggered by Ming Dynasty officials who breached the dikes to repel Li Zicheng's rebel army, killed an estimated 300,000 people and destroyed what remained of Kaifeng's commercial primacy.

Modern Kaifeng is a small city by Chinese standards—roughly 900,000 urban residents—overshadowed by provincial capital Zhengzhou just 70 kilometers west. The economy mixes light industry, agriculture, and heritage tourism. Kaifeng's night market, operating continuously for over a millennium, serves the regional food traditions that originated here: xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), spicy lamb skewers, and baozi (steamed buns). Jewish history tourism draws a niche audience—Kaifeng hosted one of the few documented Jewish communities in pre-modern China.

Kaifeng is the clearest example of how geographic vulnerability can permanently demote an urban economy. No amount of commercial genius overcomes repeated catastrophic flooding—the city that invented paper money now lives in the shadow of the provincial capital, its Song Dynasty ambitions buried under 10 meters of Yellow River silt.