We do not know where Liu Tsung-yüan was born, but it is certain that he spent most of his youth in Ch'ang-an and its neighboring areas. During the last fourteen years of his life, when he served in southwestern frontier provinces as a banished official, in his heart and in his poems Ch'ang-an was the “hometown” to which he dreamed of returning. Having been back only once for a short recall, he died in Liu-chou (in present Kwangsi) in 819 at the age of forty-six. His family members and friends, however, buried him in Ch'ang-an. Without question, by virtue of his long residence in that city and his deep affection for it, Liu was truly a man of Ch'ang-an.

Ch'ang-an in T'ang China was, for most of the time, a glorious city. It was the imperial capital, a vast metropolis, and the cosmopolitan hub of all East Asia. In the last quarter of the eighth century, when Liu resided there, despite the fact that the city had suffered great physical damage not long before from the An Lu-shan rebellion and the Tibetan invasion of 763, Ch'ang-an's economic and cultural activities were more thriving than ever. At that time, Ch'ang-an had a population of approximately one million. People of all professions, classes, races, and nationalities, ranging from native peasants, soldiers and grandees to Persian traders, Japanese Buddhist monks and Central Asian wineshop waitresses, gathered there.