Tang – Song
Review Early Dynasties
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Shang Dynasty1766-1122
Zhou Dynasty1122-221
– Last 400yrs - warring states
Qin Dynasty 221 -206 BCE
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Shi huangdi (1st emperor)
Legalist philosophy
First coinage, writing system,
Censorship
Lasts 15 years
China- in 2,000 years - 23
dynasties - 9 important ones
Han Dynasty
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Han Dynasty
(classical era)
– Confucian based society
– Merit system-bureaucrats
– Paper & porcelain invented
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For 400 years after fall of Han time of great troubles…
– Buddhism becomes popular in
this period
Tang Dynasty (618-918)
• Sui unite China - rule
for 30 years
• Tang
– Increased boundaries
– Heavy dependence on
Militarism
Tang Taizong the grand emperor
• Rise of Tang
• First emperor &
minister (Wei Zheng)model of good rule
• Imperial power and
moral restraint in
theory - in practice
hard to maintain
Tang
– Trade & commerce grow
– Printing
– Arts- focus on
landscape/nature
– Gun powder
– Woodblock printing
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Capital city Chang’an (eternal
peace) 24 mile walled city
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Artistic / commercial & invention
continues in Song era
Empress Wu
• Ruled for 50 years 705
– Biggest challenge deal with
scholar/gentry and old
aristocrats
– Economy remained strong!
• Econ- equal land
system
• Civil exam system
– Blow to noble class
– Social mobility
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Confucianism as official philosophy
= cultural literacy uniting China
Tang Xuanzong (The Profound Emperor) and Consort Yang
Decline of Tang - Losing the Mandate of Heaven
• Xuanzong
– (Empress Wu’s grandson)
– Patron of arts
– Decline due to lack
of morality?
– Blame consortduring rebellion,
soldiers want her
head - he gives it to
them
– He abdicates
• Other reasons for
decline
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751 - loss to Arabs at Talas
– Equal land system
breaks down
– Poor attention to
canal & irrigation
systems
– Nomadic attacks
• Moral: China’s view
– Centralization = unity
= peace (stability)
– Decentralization =
Song Dynasty 960-1279
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Rise - 907 960 saw the fragmentation of
China into five northern dynasties and
ten southern kingdoms until Song unify
CHARACTERISTICS
– Scholar-gentry class
dominates
• abuses in civil service
exam develop
– Paper money
– Arts & commerce
– 11C Needle compass
(3rd century - South pointer)
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Urbanization
rise of mercantile class
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By the end of the Song, 2/3 to
3/4 of the Chinese population is
concentrated below the
Yangtze.
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The Grand Canal, built during
the Sui Dynasty, connects the
Yangtze and the Yellow rivers,
facilitating the transport of
agricultural production from the
south to the north and helping to
unify the economy of China.
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.
Neo-Confucianism
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The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the
ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these
philosophers was Zhu Xi ( b1130-1200), 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.
Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of
Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
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Army Area Handbook on China, written by Rinn-Sup Shinn and Robert L. Worden.
Splintering of North & Southern Song
• Heavy dependence
on growth of civilian
government at
expense of military
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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)
North & Southern Song
Learn more about the SONG
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/song/
Tang & Song Influence on East Asia
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The influence of Chinese civilization spreads throughout East Asia as
neighboring countries study and borrow from Chinese civilization
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Korea, Japan, and what is today Vietnam
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Confucian thought and social and political values
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Buddhism
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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.