[Sponsored Article] Those emerging industries in Zhengzhou, like high-end manufacturing, the internet, new energy, information technology, contributed to 24 per cent of the city’s GDP growth in 2015.

As the city of Zhengzhou and its inhabitants change with the rest of the mainland, some things still remain the same - primarily food. 

Large shopping malls are significant catalysts of service sector growth in mainland cities, and Zhengzhou has built its consumer economy around them. 

Zhengzhou's modernisation drive is not just relegated to the Zhengdong central business district (CBD) or to other infrastructure improvements in and around the city. The improvements are not the end, but merely the means to the real goal of the local administration: a modernisation of the people in how they act, dress, buy, think and play. It will take time for the real changes to come. 

Zhengzhou's rapid economic growth has been boosted by e-commerce. The city is riding the wave of online shopping by making international purchases cheaper and easier to buy for the nation's 649 million internet users. Zhengzhou is one of the six cities selected to run a pilot cross-border e-commerce project that was jointly approved in 2013 by the nation's General Administration of Customs and the National Development and Reform Commission. 

Rising in the outskirts of Zhengzhou is a 415-square-kilometre "aero-tropolis" - a city with an airport at its core. Still in its infancy, the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone (ZAEZ) will be home to more than 2.5 million people whose lives and livelihoods will be supported by a five-runway airport primarily servicing the area's manufacturing and logistics industries.

Shaolin Temple has an aggressive and wide-ranging outreach programme that isn't confined to the temple and the corporation that runs it but also extends to the wushu schools that have cropped up around the temple. 

With 60 skyscrapers in two concentric circles, Zhengzhou's Zhengdong central business district (CBD) aims to become a financial and banking hub in central China.

Zhengzhou is an emerging tourist city, one of the oldest inhabited areas in China and surrounded by living reminders of the world's oldest continuous civilisation. After years of playing second fiddle to other more famous areas of the mainland, Zhengzhou is finally coming into its own. It boasts the deep martial arts legacy of the Shaolin Temple and the ancient roots of Chinese civilisation in the Shang ruins and the Yellow Emperor. It also acts as custodian for the Yellow River, the heart of China. 

The unprecedented proliferation of top-flight hotels in Zhengzhou is transforming the local market and offering an array of upscale options. 

Zhengzhou's Zhengdong New District was once cited as one of the mainland's ghost cities by the international media, but the steady increase in public services, transport infrastructure, commercial outlets, educational facilities and employment opportunities has transformed the district into a place that is ready to sustain a large population. At least 1.4 million people have already moved in, and more are on the way. 

Zhengzhou's history lies not just within the city limits, but also across the countryside and the plains formed by the Yellow River. You must venture out to truly understand the history of this area and the legacy of its many dynasties and emperors. 

The Shang archaeological site in Zhengzhou is one of the oldest known. Even older than Anyang's, the Shang site is rich in artefacts, weapons, oracle bones and other items that describe the civilisation that ruled here about 3,000 years ago.

The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, is widely considered to be the ancestor of all Chinese people. The first mentions of the Yellow Emperor as an actual political figure rather than a mythical deity began a little more than 2,500 years ago, during the Warring States period. That period began with the crumbling of the Zhou Empire and concluded when the Qin Emperor unified China in 221BC.