This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
China gathers five cities that mark successive centers of Chinese religious authority, from the earliest written record of Chinese religion to a still living seat of Tibetan Buddhist government.
Anyang was the last capital of the Shang dynasty and the site where the oracle bones were found, inscribed animal bone and shell that are the earliest substantial Chinese writing and the earliest direct record of Chinese religion, naming the high god Di and the sacrifices made to the royal ancestors. Beijing has been the ritual capital of successive dynasties since the Yuan; its Temple of Heaven hosted the emperor's winter solstice sacrifice as holder of the Mandate of Heaven, and its White Cloud Temple, Yonghe Temple and Niujie Mosque today serve Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist and Hui Muslim communities under state recognized associations.
Chang'an, on the site of modern Xi'an, was capital of the Han and again of the Tang and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, making it the most religiously mixed city in East Asia; Xuanzang directed sutra translation there after returning from India in 645, and Nestorian, Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Muslim communities are all attested there. Lhasa, founded under the seventh century emperor Songtsen Gampo around the Jokhang temple, became the joint religious and political capital of Tibet once the Potala Palace was built, until the fourteenth Dalai Lama left in 1959. Qufu, traditionally the birthplace and burial place of Confucius, has been a center of Confucian ritual life since the Han dynasty, its temple, family mansion and cemetery inscribed together by UNESCO for their unbroken continuity.
Across three thousand years the group traces the same office moving: sacrifice, mandate and living lineage each finding its own capital.