Handan lies at the foot of the Taihang mountains in southern Hebei, on the western edge of the plain. It was the capital of the state of Zhao in the Warring States period, and the idioms that carry its name still circulate in Chinese. The county around it holds a remarkable concentration of older material: the Cizhou kilns at Guantai and Pengcheng, the Northern Qi grottoes at Xiangtangshan, the cliff temple of Wahuang at She County, and the walled town of Guangfu in Yongnian, where tai chi is taught as a local discipline. East of the city, Daming County keeps the earth walls of its Song and Ming towns and a stretch of the Yongji canal.
Cizhou ware was made for ordinary tables along the Zhang and Fu rivers: sturdy bowls, jars and pillows of coarse clay, covered in white slip and painted in black. Its potters wrote poems and painted scenes from plays, and the kilns produced the first overglaze enamels in China.
Wahuang Palace in She County honours Nüwa, the goddess who mended the sky, and holds two caves of Northern Qi Buddhist scripture cut into the cliff. The temple buildings are Ming; the myth and the stone text are older, and the site is still treated as a shrine.
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The Xiangtangshan caves near Handan were carved for the Northern Qi court in the sixth century, with sutras cut into the rock and a possible imperial burial chamber above a central pillar. Many of their sculptures were later removed to museums abroad.
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Guangfu is a walled town on a peninsula in the Yongnian marsh, with a Ming brick wall, a wide moat and the former houses of the founders of Yang- and Wu-style tai chi. Its streets and gates still follow the plan of a prefecture seat.
ReadThe Song-Jin kiln district along the Zhang and Fu rivers, known for white slip and black-painted everyday vessels.
A cliff-side temple complex at She County dedicated to Nüwa, built into the rock above the Qingzhang River.
Northern Qi Buddhist caves at Fengfeng, with carved sutra texts and some of the period's finest sculpture.
A walled town in the Yongnian wetlands, known as a centre for Yang-style tai chi.
