In the early years of the third century, around the year 207 AD, a Chinese poet by the

name Cao Chi made a journey back to the place of his birth, a city called Luoyang.

At this time, the lands of China were in chaos. The armies of rival warlords were now tearing

the country apart, and so his journey can't have been an easy one.

Cao Chi was the son of a powerful warlord in the central plains of China, but he was also

a notorious drunk. He had embarrassed his family to such an extent that he was exiled,

and he now returned to the only other place he knew, his hometown of Luoyang.

Luoyang had once been a prosperous place. For centuries, poets had written about its bustling

life and its leafy avenues full of blossom, leading up to grand palaces and temples, decorated

with thousands of bronze statues. It had been the capital of China in the golden age

of the emperors, which had lasted for more than 400 years, but Cao had heard that Luoyang

had suffered in the recent wars. Still, when he came over the crest of the Beemang

mountains to the north, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw stretching out beneath

him. The entire city of Luoyang was a blackened ruin. Later, he wrote a poem about what

he saw. I climbed the ridge of Beemang mountain and looked down on the city of Luoyang.

When Luoyang has still it is, palaces and houses all burnt ashes, walls and fences all

broken and gaping, thorns and brambles shooting up to the sky.

For Cao Chen, the blackened ruins of Luoyang became an emblem of the golden age that had

now passed. Only decades before, China had been ruled by a single emperor from a dynasty

known as the Han, and a period of prosperity had rained. The Han were the first lasting

dynasty to unite China under a single banner, and people believed that this golden age

would never end. But now the poet Cao Chen walked among the ruins and ravaged fields of

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