Chang'an, the capital city of Tang Dynasty, is now called Xi'an. The city of Chang'an was built in Sui Dynasty, and called Daxing. The city took nearly 100 years to build. During Tang Dynasty, Chang'an was almost 11 times as big as today's Xi'an, and was a metropolis of international renown.

The emperor lived and ruled in the imperial palace in Chang'an. To the south of the palace there was the so-called Imperial City, where the government offices were located. Ther streets and residences of Chang'an were designed like a chessboard, with neat and symmetrical layout of the east and west. The width of many streets and avenues inside the city was over 100 m. The city of Beijing in Ming and Qing dynasties was modeled on the pattern of Chang'an.

The residential areas and commercial areas inside the city were located separately. In the commercial areas there were many shops; meat shops, fish shops, iron shops, silk shops, etc. There were said to be over 200 kind of shops in the eastern commercial area. All kinds of precious and rare goods were available there.

Chang'an was also the cultural center of China at that time, with rich and colorful recreational activities, such as music, dancing, cock fighting, tug-of-war, swing-playing, etc. The most famous painters, calligraphers and poets of Tang Dynasty usually gathered in Chang'an, and their creative cativities added much glory to the city. Students came from Japan and Korea to study in Chang'an, and merchants flocked there from Central Asia. Among the population of around one million in Chang'an, there were over 10,000 foreign households.