Rebels sack the Chinese capital Chang'an during a peasant rebellion.

AD 23 (XXIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Pollio and Vetus. The denomination AD 23 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Chang'an was a city in China, located near the modern city of Xi'an, which served as the capital of several Chinese dynasties from 202 BCE to 907 CE. The site has been inhabited since Neolithic times, during which the Yangshao culture was established in Banpo, in what is now the city's suburbs. Furthermore, in the northern vicinity of modern Xi'an, Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty, China's first emperor, held his imperial court and constructed his massive mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army.

Lulin was one of two major agrarian rebellion movements against Wang Mang's short-lived Xin dynasty in the modern southern Henan and northern Hubei regions. These two regions banded together to pool their strengths, their collective strength eventually leading to the downfall of the Xin and a temporary reinstatement of the Han dynasty with Liu Xuan as the emperor.