Listen to this articledū 都
Metropolis
国都，国君处理政事及所居的城邑。“都”与“邑”的区别是：有宗庙（陈列祖先和前代君主牌位）的城叫做“都”；没有宗庙的叫做“邑”。宗庙是大夫以上贵族统治者祭祀祖先的庙宇，是祖先崇拜的产物、宗法制度的体现，也是“都”的根本标志。周朝时，各诸侯国的政治中心都叫做“都”；秦汉以后，统指国都、帝王的治所。后规模大、人口多的城邑都可称为“都”。
The term refers to the city in which a state ruler resided and conducted government affairs. The difference between a du (都) and a yi (邑) was that the former had an ancestral temple to enshrine the memorial tablets of ancestors and previous rulers while the latter did not. An ancestral temple used to be a place where rulers, the nobility, and senior officials made offerings to their ancestors. Therefore, an ancestral temple was a product of ancestral worshipping and a symbol of the patriarchal clan system. It is the defining structure of a du. During the Zhou Dynasty, the political center of all ducal states was called du. From the Qin and Han dynasties onward, du referred to the place where the emperor lived. Later, all cities large in scale and population were called du.
引例 Citations：
◎凡邑，有宗庙先君之主曰都，无曰邑。（《左传·庄公二十八年》）
（所有城邑中，有宗庙和前代君主牌位的叫做“都”，没有的叫做“邑”。）
All cities with ancestral temples to house the memorial tablets of ancestors and previous rulers are called du while those without are called yi. (Zuo’s Commentary on The Spring and Autumn Annals)
◎国，城曰都者，国君所居，人所都会也。（刘熙《释名·释州国》）
（一国的城邑称为“都”，是因为它是国君居住、人口聚集的地方。）
When a city is called du, it is where the ruler of the land resides and where there is a large population. (Liu Xi: Explanation of Terms)
