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SCMP Reporter

The people of Henan are more puzzled than anyone by the old saying 'once you control the  central plains, you will rule the whole world'.
The saying has been passed down through the centuries as a common belief but the idea that Henan sits at the centre of power seems to have lost its relevance today.
Despite its glorious past and a strategic geographic location, three decades of reform and opening up have left the central province lagging behind in China's economic boom and struggling to shed its reputation for scandal.
'Henan is important to the origins of Chinese civilisation. The 'central plains civilisation' is a symbol of Chinese civilisation,'  Henan Deputy Governor Kong Yufang  boasted.
The claim is no exaggeration.  Henan cities have been  the capitals of dynasties down  the ages and archaeologists have found seeds of civilisation  going back  8,000 years.
Zhang Xinbing, director of the Henan Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of History and Archaeology, said that of China's  eight ancient capital cities, four are  in Henan and each of them - Luoyang , Kaifeng , Anyang  and Zhengzhou  - had left indelible impressions on the history of the nation and the world.
The area was home to legendary historical figures such as the Yellow Emperor,  philosopher Laozi,  and poet Du Fu.  Provincial government officials  also proudly claim that Henan was the birthplace of gunpowder and paper, two of ancient China's 'four great inventions'.
The remains of the country's oldest known society, a group of Neolithic communities called the Peiligang  culture,  have  been uncovered in the basin of Henan's Yiluo River.
Few  places are blessed with such a rich history and  cultural  heritage, but some wonder why Henan, once the centre of the world, is now better known for all the wrong reasons.
Poverty has haunted the heavily populated province,  about 60 per cent of whose  100 million or so people live in rural areas.
In Kaifeng and Luoyang, where imperial power was once concentrated, rundown modern buildings and rusty factories dot the skyline and most of the heritage sites have recently been rebuilt because the originals were destroyed by age, the Cultural Revolution or developers.
In 2,700-year-old Kaifeng, the oldest building still standing is the Iron Pagoda, built in 1049 AD. Otherwise, history is just a name in this city.
The central Drum Tower area has no Drum Tower because it was demolished during the Cultural Revolution.  The  famous Painting of Qingming Riverside Landscape,  by Northern Song dynasty  (960-1127) painter Zhang Zeduan,  has inspired a theme park that reminds visitors more of Disneyland than the artwork's intrinsic value.
The last Jewish resident of the Alley of Tiaojinjiao, an ancient reference to Kaifeng's once-thriving Jewish quarter, died a few years ago,  according to residents of the neighbourhood. All that remains of an ancient synagogue which dated to the Southern Song dynasty  (1127-1279), is an unrecognisable part of a boiler room in the city's No4 People's Hospital. Its Jewish community is also a mystery, with many members having integrated into the local population.
Although some historians believe Kaifeng had one of the earliest  Jewish communities in China, a government officer was quick to clarify that this community was long gone.
'They don't exist here now,' Fu Zhuohui , Kaifeng's deputy publicity chief,  said.
Nowadays the province is better known as ground zero of China's HIV/Aids epidemic.  HIV infection rates in more than 100 'Aids villages' run as high as 80 per cent. The disease spread rapidly in  the 1990s as impoverished farmers tried to earn money by selling blood through unsanitary and illegal clinics.
'Now every town in Henan has HIV/Aids victims, but the governments are covering it up by all means possible to avoid hurting investment,' HIV-positive activist Li Xige  said.
Ms Li contracted the virus in 1995 through a transfusion of contaminated blood during childbirth.
As the Olympic Games looms closer, Ms Li said she had been subjected to even greater scrutiny than usual so that she would not go to Beijing to 'create any trouble'.
A series of scandals, involving issues ranging from fake medicine to deadly  baby milk powder with almost no nutritive value,  have earned Henan a reputation as a hot spot of cheats and spawned stereotypical portrayals of its people as dishonest and untrustworthy.
Shenzhen police famously hung two banners in the Longgang district in 2005 which read  'resolutely crack down on Henan racketeering gangs' and offered a 500 yuan reward for information on Henan gangs. Shenzhen police later apologised after two Henan lawyers filed a landmark regional discrimination case.
The only part of Henan's  heritage that still attracts worldwide attention, the Shaolin kung fu temple, is under attack for deviating from its Buddhist roots by becoming commercially driven.
Li Dongzhao  , one of the lawyers who sued the Shenzhen police, said poverty was one of the reasons  Henan people were typecast in a negative way.
'Henan is still an agricultural province, and it has lagged  behind other places during the economic opening up, so there are comparatively more problems,' he said.
Professor Zhang from the Henan Academy of Social Sciences said that with a population of nearly 100 million,  the possibility of  things going  wrong was higher than in most other places. 'Henan is the epitome of China. It has all the essence and all the problems of China. All the negative stereotypes of Henan apply equally to  the Chinese people.'



Henan: renowned for all the wrong reasons