The Resurgence of Empire in China

The Tang and Song

Sui Dynasty (581-618)

United the Northern and Southern regions of China for the first time

in centuries

•Go back to the Han Dynasty

•The Han: Settled parts of Northern China and intermingled and married with the local Turkic peoples.

•The Tang: Rulers and nobility

•Descendents of the Turkic elites and Chinese officials who settled there in the time of the Han.

Where did the Tang rulers and nobles come from?

TangDynasty (618-907)

Rise of the Tang• Li Yuan, a general in the Sui Army, seized the capital city of

Chang’an and proclaimed himself the New Emperor

•His Son, Li Shimin soon took over and assumed the name

Tang Taizong, the Grand Emperor

•Tang launched a program of internal renewal and external expansion that would make it one of the greatest dynasties

in Chinese history

Incorporated culture from:

•Turkic culture

• Tibetan Culture

•Traditional Chinese Culture

Camels and horses used in the Silk Route trade were the favorite subjects for artists.

Tang DynastyCulture

•The Tang combined Chinese and Turkic weapons and tactics

•Chinese :•crossbows •armored infantry men

•Turkish :•horsemanship •iron stirrups•Iron Work

•The Tang military reached its peak from about 650-751

•Defeated in Central Asia by an Arab Muslim army at the Battle of the Talas River.

Tang DynastyWarfare

PoliticalThree Keys to success1. Maintenance of

transportation and communication networks

2. Reliance on a bureaucracy based on merit, a meritocracy using the civil service exams

3. Revival of Han Confucianism: Created a foundation for stability and prosperity for the Chinese people

Tang Dynasty: Confucianism

Government inspired by Confucianism

Three Keys to success1. Maintenance of transportation and

communication networks2. Distribution of land – Equal-field

system, only 1/5th of property was the hereditary possession of a family

3. Reliance on a bureaucracy based on merit, a meritocracy using the civil service exams

Revival of Han Confucianism: Created a foundation for stability and prosperity for the

Chinese people

• Canals: Grand Canal connected Yellow River and Yangtze River. Allowed grains in south to be shipped to north.

• Expanded Trade: Tang merchants traded with India, Persia, and the Middle East. Chinese became expert shipbuilders and a naval power.

This led to a huge influx of precious metal into China – a trend that would continue until the 19th century.

• Land Reform – Equal-field system, redistributed land to peasants.

Tang Dynasty: Economic System

•Foreigners: •Required to reside in special compounds•including living accommodations & general stores•By the end of the Tang period, West Asians in Chang’an numbered over 100,000.

•Chang’an (Xian) •Population of over 1 million people making it one of largest cities in the world.

•City Center: •restaurants, inns, temples, mosques and street stalls

•Citywide Curfews:•Neighborhoods were enclosed by brick walls and wooden gates.

The game of Polo was

imported from Persia.

Tang DynastySocial Structure

Buddhist Carvings along the Silk Route by Tang Artists.

Chang’an restored

China to the glory of the Han Dynasty

Possibly the greatest city of the world of its time

Tang Dynasty: Chang’an

Territorially, the Tang Empire ranks among the largest in

Chinese history

Because of the Grand Canal and other government projects for shipping grain and other goods, the Tang Dynasty had the strongest economy of the time period.

Even in its decline, Tang exports far outnumbered imports from South Asia, West Asia, Europe and Africa combined.

Tang Dynasty: Empress Wu

Empress Wu – (649-705)• Wu Zetian became the first

and only woman to be Emperor – supported Buddhism.

• Began a campaign to elevate the position of women. Said that the ideal ruler was one

who ruled like a mother does over her children.

• Meritocracy - Civil Service exams- best people ran the

government and were treated fairly.

• Reduced the army's size and stopped the influence of aristocratic military men.

• Fairness to peasants- lowering taxes, raising

agricultural production, and strengthening public works.

The Golden AgeArtistic, Technological and Industrial Developments

Moveable Type

Chinese junks

Porcelain - Chinaware

Gunpowder and Rockets

Landscape art

Other reasons for decline Equal land system breaks down Persecution of Buddhism Poor attention to canal & irrigation systems Nomadic alliances and attacks

Decline of the Tang Dynasty

Emperor Xuanzong• (Empress Wu’s grandson) Ruled for 44 years• Patron of arts• Began to neglect the people and engaged in pleasure seeking lifestyle• Decline due to lack of morality?• Government corruption• He was forced to abdicate his power

Unit 4

History 7

Song Dynasty (960-1279)

The Rainbow Bridge

Political System: 907-960 saw the fragmentation of China into five northern

dynasties and ten southern kingdoms

• Song Taizu united much of the former Tang Dynasty

• Moved capital to Huangzhou in the south

• Centralized government, limited the military, and expanded the Bureaucracy, offered many political positions

with generous salaries

• Civil Service Exams

• Used Neo-Confucianism as basis of political system

An imperial Confucius Temple in modern Hangzhou

The government began an expensive and massive project to restore Confucian temples around the empire – was the responsibility of local population.

•The most influential of these philosophers, whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. •As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. •The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century.

Zhu Xi (1130-1200)

What is Neo-Confucianism and why did it occur?•Neo-Confucianism is an attempt to broaden the topics and depth of the philosophy.

•Traditional Confucianism devoted most of its time to the development of sound governmental theory and state building.

•Neo-Confucianism expanded into what the West would call metaphysics, human nature and the world order.

•This was an attempt to curtail the growing influence of Daoism and especially Buddhism.

The Exam SystemLike previous dynasties, the Song wanted

the best people possible for government positions. They continued and revamped the traditional exam system. They made the recruiting system more egalitarian so they could attract the best and brightest from all segments of the population.

The three levels were:

1.the prefectural examination

2."department" or metropolitan examination

3.the last step was the palace examination

Song Dynasty (960-1279)

• New developments in rice cultivation, especially the

introduction of new strains from what is now Central Vietnam, spectacularly increased rice yields.

• As a result the population, which had never before

exceeded 60 million, grew to 100 million by 1127. Led to

Urbanization.

• By the end of the Song, 2/3 to 3/4 of the Chinese

population is concentrated below the Yangtze.

Two men walking into a Chinese Tavern

Song Dynasty (960-1279)• Rise of the Merchant

•The basic unit of payment was copper coins strung on a string, but these were heavy and cumbersome for use in large-

scale transactions. The Song solution was to print paper money

• Rural markets, as well as cities and towns, facilitated the exchange of goods

and services. Some of the products on sale in this city depicted in the scroll would

have come from nearby farms, but others came from far away.

• International maritime trade also flourished during this time. Quanzhou in

the Fujian region became a major center of trade with Southeast and South Asia, as

well as with Korea and Japan. Paper Money

Culture• Made refinements in the ideal of the universal man

• combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman

• Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics.

• This renewed interest in the Confucianism coincided with the decline of Buddhism

• Seen as offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.

Footbinding is a tradition that evolved in the concept of "ideal image" including beauty, marriage and sex. It was considered charming, showed a sense of class, and was the symbol of chastity in most Chinese cultures. It was believed to promote health and fertility, although in the reality the

tradition was painful and virtually crippling. It was a way to keep women in seclusion, which made them more dependent on others and less useful around the house.

Footbinding

The most popular and stylish type of foot binding shoes were

known as "golden lotus“ or "lotus shoes". The term "golden lotus" emerged in the southern Tang dynasty around 920 AD where the emperor Li Yu ordered his

favorite concubine, Fragrant Girl, to bind her feet with silk bands and dance on a golden lotus

platform decorated with pearls and gems. Also this term is a synonym for bound feet. Most lotus shoes were beautifully

embroidered and about three inches long ("lotus shoes"). The

lotus shoes are known to be lovely and alluring to the male

population in China.

Footbinding

When asked about the purpose of footbinding the overwhelming majority of women responded very plainly that without bound feet it was impossible to find a husband. A normal footed woman was commonly viewed as a freak of nature, and with unbound feet her pain overflowed into not 1,000, but 5,000 buckets of tears. She was considered lewd and unrefined, often subject to mockery and the brunt of village ridicule. At times in certain areas such women were so rare and unbelievable they were thought to exist only in myth. Women of the upper classes could never have imagined finding a husband of equal status without binding their feet, and if a normal footed woman of a lower class could not find a suitable mate among her economic peers, she could hope for no more than to be sold into slavery or service to those who did bind.

"If a girls’ feet are not bound, they go here and there with unfitting associates" stated a 17th century writer. The women of the wealthy villages are more involved with footbinding than the poor. It began in the late Tang Dynasty (618-906) and gradually spread through the upper class during the Song Dynasty (960-1297). It lasted approximately one thousand years.

Footbinding

North & Southern Song

• Scholar-gentry class dominates• abuses in civil service exam

develop• Heavy dependence on growth of

civilian government at expense of military• By 1127, the Song court could

not push back the Northern nomadic invaders

• Surrounded by north ‘empires’ (Jurchin’)

• Invasion of Mongols from North 1279• Start of Yuan (Mongol Dynasty)

Decline of the Song

The word "pagoda" derives from the Sanskrit

word bhagavat (cf. the book Bhagavatgita)

"holy".

Stupas in India

Very Old Stupa in Modern Pakistan

Pagoda in Burma

Chinese Pagoda

Tang & Song Influence on East Asia

• The influence of Chinese civilization spreads throughout East Asia as neighboring countries study and borrow from Chinese civilization

• Korea, Japan, and what is today Vietnam

• Confucian thought and social and political values

• Buddhism

• Literary Chinese and its writing system which becomes the language of government and that used by the elites of these societies to communicate among themselves.

Song Dynasty (960-1279)Song Dynasty (960-1279)Economic System:

•Rise of the Merchant

•The basic unit of payment was copper coins strung on a string, but these were heavy and cumbersome for use in large-

scale transactions. The Song solution was to print paper money

• Rural markets, as well as cities and towns, facilitated the exchange of goods

and services.

• International maritime trade also flourished during this time. Quanzhou in

the Fujian region became a major center of trade with Southeast and South Asia, as

well as with Korea and Japan.

Paper Money

AchievementsAchievements• New developments in rice cultivation, especially the

introduction of new strains from what is now Central Vietnam, spectacularly increased rice yields.

• As a result the population, which had never before

exceeded 60 million, grew to 100 million by 1127. Led to

Urbanization.

• Shaped Korea, Vietnam, and Japan

Footbinding is a tradition that evolved in the concept of "ideal image" including beauty. It was considered

charming, showed a sense of class, and was the symbol of chastity in most Chinese cultures. It was believed to promote health and fertility, although in

the reality the tradition was painful and virtually crippling. It was a way to keep women in seclusion,

which made them more dependent on others and less useful around the house.

An imperial Confucius Temple in modern Hangzhou

The government began an expensive and massive project to restore Confucian temples around the empire – was responsibility of local population.

North & Southern SongNorth & Southern Song

• Scholar-gentry class dominates• abuses in civil service exam

develop• Heavy dependence on growth of

civilian government at expense of military• By 1127, the Song court could

not push back the Northern nomadic invaders

• Surrounded by north ‘empires’ (Jurchin’)

• Invasion of Mongols from North 1279• Start of Yuan (Mongol Dynasty)

Decline of the SongDecline of the Song