Luoyang

City in Henan province, China, south of the Huang He River; population (2000) 1,233,800. Industries include oil-refining and the production of glass, machinery, and tractors. Luoyang was the capital of China for nearly eight centuries under the Eastern Zhou (8th–3rd century BC) and other dynasties, and an important Buddhist centre in the 5th and 6th centuries.

Features Strategically important, the city was ruined several times during civil wars. The Longmen Gorge of the Huang He River, with its thousands of Buddhist statues dating from the 5th century BC, lies a few kilometres north of the city. The White Horse Temple (Baimasi), 8 km/5 mi northeast of the city, dates from the Ming dynasty and was restored in the 1950s; the original monastery, built in AD 75, was one of the earliest Buddhist buildings in China. There are cave temples dating from the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534) to the south.

Construction began in 1997 of a major crude-oil pipeline from Korla in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to Luoyang.