Reunification of China – Sui Song & Tang Chinese Golden Age

1
Reunification of China SuiSong
TangChinese Golden Age

• Chapter 12

2
China During the Era of Division, The Sui
Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty
3
Sui Dynasty

• Yangdi (son of Wendi)
• Legal reform
• Reorganized Confucian education
• Canals built, completion Grand Canal -
  longest in the world (still)
• reconstruction of Great Wall
• Attacked Korea costly disastrous
• Defeated by Turks 615
• Assassinated 618
• early 7th C - dynasty disintegrated - popular
  revolts, disloyalty assassinations

4
Tang Dynasty

• Scholar-gentry elite based on examinations (not
  family connections)
• Highest offices went only to individuals able to
  pass exams based on the Confucian
  classics/Chinese literature some social
  mobility possible BUT central administration
  dominated by a small number of prominent families
• Overland trade routes - Silk Road - reaching as
  far as Syria and Rome
• Confucian ideology supreme
• Result ? imperial unity power of the
  aristocracy reduced
• Bureau of Censors closely watched all officials.
• Specialized exams administered by Ministry of
  Public Rites

Tang era gilt-silver ear cup with flower motif
Powerful cultural influence over Korea Japan
5
Tang /Song Economy

• Silk routes reopened - greater contact with
  Buddhist, Islamic regions
• Sea trade
• Use of Junks increased maritime commerce
• RESULT ?Commerce expands Credit - deposit shops
• Flying money
• Dev. of cities urban pop. growth Tang capital
  Changan pop. 2 million largest city in
  world at time
• group of wealthy commoners--the mercantile
  class--arose
• printing education spread, private trade grew,
  and a market economy began to link the coastal
  provinces and the interior
• Landholding govt employment no longer the only
  means of gaining wealth and prestige

Court portrait painting of Emperor Taizu of
Song (960976)
6
Buddhism becomes fully entrenched in Chinese
culture

• Split in Buddhism
• Mahayana Buddhism popular in era of turmoil
• Chan (Zen) Buddhism common among elite - stressed
  meditation appreciation of natural artistic
  beauty
• Empress Wu (690-705) supported Buddhism
• Endows monasteries
• Tried to make Buddhism the state religion
• 50,000 monasteries by c. 850
• Persecution of Buddhism under Emperor Wuzong
• 841-847
• Monasteries destroyed
• Lands redistributed
• Confucian re-emerges as central ideology

7
Tang Decline

• Emperor Xuanzong (713-756)

• Mistress - Yang Guifei gained power
• Relatives gain power in govt
• 755 - Revolt led by An Lushan - Chinese general
  (Iranian/Turkish) - proclaimed himself emperor
  later killed by his own son
• RESULT? civil war Yang Guifei executed blamed
  for rebellion
• Central government lost its grip on the local
  administration
• 907 -- last Tang emperor resigns- Warlordism
  broke out - China divided into north and south -
  many small shortlived dynasties

Paintings of Yang Guifei An Lushan
8
Song Dynasty

• Zhao Kuangyin (Taizu) - birth of Song dynasty
• Scholar-gentry given power over military
• Revival of Confucian Thought
• Libraries established, old texts recovered
• Neo-confucians - stressed personal morality
  male dominance
• Hostility to foreign ideas
• Gender, class, age distinctions reinforced

9
Example of Chinese pottery
Scholar in a Meadow, 11th century
The Spinning Wheel, by Northern Song artist
Wang Juzheng -one of the earliest representations
of the invention
10
Womens Status Tang / Early Song
The Status of women improved during Tang early
Song started declining during the late Song
WHY?

• Elite women had broader opportunities / careers
• Empresses Wu, Wei Mistress Yang Guifei
  signif. political power
• Legal code supported womens rights in divorce
• Some wealthy, urban women had lovers - example of
  female independence
• Marriage brokers - professional female
  match-makers
• Partners were of the same age marriage
  ceremonies did not take place until puberty
• Rights of women deteriorate in late Song Dynasty
• stressed the roles of homemaker and mother
• advocated physical confinement of women
• emphasized the importance of bridal virginity,
  wifely fidelity, and widow chastity
• Men were permitted free sexual behavior
  remarriage
• fewer Buddhist monasteries (fewer women monks)
• New laws favored men in property inheritance
  divorce
• Women excluded from education system
• Footbinding - painful, mobility restricting
  practice

11
Tang and Song Prosperity Golden Age - Expanding
Agrarian Production

• Peasants encouraged to migrate to new areas
  govt provided irrigation
• Canals built
• New crops technology increased yields.
• Aristocratic estates broken up - more equitable
  distribution of land for free peasants
• Confucian scholars believed peasants were
  essential for a stable and prosperous social
  order
• Scholar-gentry replaced aristocracy

A red lacquerware food tray with gold foil
engraving designs of two long-tailed birds and a
peony (12th -13th C)
Chinese ships of the Song period featured hulls
w/ watertight compartments (10851145)
12
Tang Song achievements in science, technology
culture

• Technological / scientific discoveriesnew tools,
  production methods, weaponspassed to other
  civilizations - altered the course of human
  development
• Arts / literature passed to neighboring
  regionscentral Asia, Japan, and Vietnam.
• Engineering feats - Grand Canal, dikes and dams,
  irrigation systems, and bridges
• Banks paper money stimulated prosperity
• Explosive powder Tang invented - fireworks /
  Song adapted for military use
• Song armies navies - flamethrowers, poisonous
  gasses, rocket launchers
• Chairs, tea drinking, the use of coal for fuel,
  compasses, kites

A trebuchet catapult - used to launch the
earliest type of explosive bombs
13
Song dynasty falls to Mongols

• Southern Song - 11271279 - Song lost control of
  northern China to the Jin Dynasty
• Song court retreated south of the Yangtze River
  established their capital at Lin'an
• Kubilai Khan defeated Jin founded the Yuan
  dynasty in Northern China
• The Chinese economy, until the 18th C, was a
  world leader in market orientation, overseas
  trade volume, productivity per acre,
  sophistication of tools, and techniques of craft
  production.
• COT ?China, as a civilization, retained many
  traditional patterns, but it also changed
  dramatically in the balance between regions, in
  commercial and urban development, and in
  technology.
• Outside influences - Buddhism sinified