Meng Hua Lu is set in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Tokyo is the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, also known as Bianjing, which is now Kaifeng, Henan Province. The reason why it is called Tokyo means the capital of the east. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, China has been named in ancient times and likes to add a locative word in front of "Beijing" or "capital" to show its position.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, there were four capitals in East, West, South and North successively, with Tokyo as its capital. This place was Bianzhou in the Tang Dynasty, the eastern capital in Houliang, Tokyo in the late Jin Dynasty, and the capital in the later Han Dynasty and the later Zhou Dynasty. After the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, it became the capital city. On the basis of the old city, it was rebuilt and rebuilt several times, and its scale far exceeded that of the previous generation.
Tokyo is divided into outer city, inner city and imperial city. The outer city wall is more than fifty miles long, with eleven gates, three gates in the south, two gates in the east and west, and four gates in the north. Because four canals run through, there are nine water gates. There is a moat outside the city, called Hulong River, which is more than ten feet wide, and willows are planted along the river. The inner city is in the middle of Tokyo, slightly to the northwest, with a wall circumference of more than 20 miles and ten gates.
The imperial city, also known as Miyagi, has five walls and six doors. Throughout Tokyo, there are three city walls, four canals, thirty-three bridges, four imperial roads and more than forty palaces. As the political, economic and cultural center of the Northern Song Dynasty, Tokyo's prosperity is second to none in the country, as can be seen from the famous book Dream of Tokyo and the famous painting Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival.