Zhongyuan in the context of "Han Chinese"

The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze basin constitutes the geographic core of the Chinese cultural sphere. China maintains a rich diversity of ethnic and linguistic people groups. The traditional lens for viewing Chinese history is the dynastic cycle: imperial dynasties rise and fall, and are ascribed certain achievements. This lens also tends to assume Chinese civilization can be traced as an unbroken thread many thousands of years into the past, making it one of the cradles of civilization. At various times, states representative of a dominant Chinese culture have directly controlled areas stretching as far west as the Tian Shan, the Tarim Basin, and the Himalayas, as far north as the Sayan Mountains, and as far south as the delta of the Red River.

The Neolithic period saw increasingly complex polities begin to emerge along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The Erlitou culture in the central plains of China is sometimes identified with the Xia dynasty (3rd millennium BC) of traditional Chinese historiography. The earliest surviving written Chinese dates to roughly 1250 BC, consisting of divinations inscribed on oracle bones. Chinese bronze inscriptions, ritual texts dedicated to ancestors, form another large corpus of early Chinese writing. The earliest strata of received literature in Chinese include poetry, divination, and records of official speeches. China is believed to be one of a very few loci of independent invention of writing, and the earliest surviving records display an already-mature written language. The culture remembered by the earliest extant literature is that of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 – 256 BC), China's Axial Age, during which the Mandate of Heaven was introduced, and foundations laid for philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and Wuxing.

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (Chinese: 五代十國) was an era of political upheaval and division in Imperial China from 907 to 979 AD. Five dynastic states quickly succeeded one another in the Central Plain, and more than a dozen concurrent dynastic states, collectively known as the Ten Kingdoms, were established elsewhere, mainly in South China. It was a prolonged period of multiple political divisions in Chinese imperial history.

Traditionally, the era is seen as beginning with the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907 and reaching its climax with the founding of the Song dynasty in 960. In the following 19 years, Song gradually subdued the remaining states in South China, but the Liao dynasty still remained in China's north (eventually succeeded by the Jin dynasty), and the Western Xia was eventually established in China's northwest.

Kaifeng (Chinese: 开封; pinyin: Kāifēng) is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, most notably during the Northern Song dynasty.

As of the 2020 census, 4,824,016 people lived in Kaifeng's Prefecture, of whom 1,735,581 lived in the metropolitan area consisting of Xiangfu, Longting, Shunhe Hui, Gulou and Yuwantai Districts. Located along the Yellow River's southern bank, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the west, Xinxiang to the northwest, Shangqiu to the east, Zhoukou to the southeast, Xuchang to the southwest, and Heze of Shandong to the northeast.

The Xianbei (/ʃjɛnˈbeɪ/; simplified Chinese: 鲜卑; traditional Chinese: 鮮卑; pinyin: Xiānbēi) were an ancient nomadic people that once resided in the eastern Eurasian steppes in what is today Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeastern China. The Xianbei were likely not of a single ethnicity, but rather a multilingual, multi-ethnic confederation consisting of mainly Proto-Mongols (who spoke either pre-Proto-Mongolic, or Para-Mongolic languages), and, to a minor degree, Tungusic and Turkic peoples. They originated from the Donghu people who splintered into the Wuhuan and Xianbei when they were defeated by the Xiongnu at the end of the third century BC. Following the split, the Xianbei people did not have direct contact with the Han dynasty, residing to the north of the Wuhuan. In the first century BC, the Xianbei began actively engaging in the struggle between the Han and Xiongnu, culminating in the Xianbei replacing the Xiongnu on the Mongolian Plateau.

In the mid-2nd century, the chieftain, Tanshihuai unified the Xianbei and waged war against the Han dynasty. His confederation threatened the Han's northern borders for many years, but quickly disintegrated following his death in 181 AD. After suffering several defeats by the end of the Three Kingdoms period, the Xianbei migrated southwards and settled in close proximity to Han society, submitting as vassals to the Chinese dynasties. As one of the so-called "Five Barbarians", they fought as auxiliaries for the Western Jin dynasty during the War of the Eight Princes and the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians before eventually distancing themselves and declaring their autonomy while the Jin were pushed out from northern China. During the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the Xianbei founded several short-lived states and established themselves on the Central Plains.