Post-Classical World: Medieval China’s Tang and Song Dynasties
The Tang Dynasty, 618-907 AD
After the fall of the Han Dynasty, China saw much chaos similar to what happened in Europe after
the fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike Europe though, China was eventually reunited. The Tang Dynasty
was the next Chinese Dynasty to unite China for an extended amount of time.
Tang Culture
The Tang dynasty is known as the "golden age" of Chinese culture. The capital of the Tang
Dynasty, Chang-an, became incredibly wealthy and supported the flowering of Chinese culture.
Due to the popularity of the Silk Road trade routes, Chang-an became a meeting place of many
different cultures and religions: Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Islam all influenced Tang
culture. Syrians, Jews, Arabs, Persians, Koreans, Tibetans, and Japanese all lived side by side with the
Chinese of Chang-an. In 636, Christians from Syria were allowed to build a church and hold Christian
services barely six hundred years after the founding of Christianity and less than three hundred years after
Christianity had become the state religion of Rome. The foreigners not only brought in new religions, but
new clothes, cuisine, literature, and music as well. The imperial court itself had several performing troupes
of actors and musicians gathered from surrounding nations permanently performing at the court.
Among their cultural achievements, the Tang craftsmen
excelled in making porcelain and jade pottery, utensils and
sculptures. Tang weavers advanced their silk-weaving, making
clothes much softer and more extravagant than what Europeans
were wearing in their scratchy wool. Porcelain and silk were in
high demand, furthering increasing the trade between the world
and China.
Poetry became a popular subject for all these new readers. The poet Li Po (701-762) became
quite popular. His poetry focused on simple language that allowed the reader to immediately understand his
emotions. He loved to celebrate the beauty of life and nature and wanted to share that love.
Questions:
Tang Dynasty
1. Describe how foreign cultures were viewed in China during this time?
2. During the Tang Dynasty, what goods were in high demand on the Silk Road?
AFTER YOU READ BOTH ARTICLES!!!!! (ONE ON THE BACK) RANK THE TOP FIVE
IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENTS FROM THE TANG AND SONG DYNASTIES IN
ORDER AND EXPLAIN WHY!!!!!!!!!
1.
2.
3.
4
5.
The Song Dynasty, 960-1279 AD
Eventually, the Tang Dynasty fell under pressure from outside invasions and domestic
rebellions. The Song Dynasty soon took control over China after the fall of the Tang.
The Song Economy
Under the Song Dynasty, China experienced an agricultural and commercial revolution.
Chinese farmers saw their production and wealth increase dramatically. For hundreds of years
Chinese dynasties had required peasants to do free manual labor for the government each year.
This was how China built the Great Wall and roads. All the time they spent working for the
government, was less time they worked on their fields. The Song Dynasty eliminated forced labor.
Secondly, farmers were allowed to buy and sell land for the first time. You see, some people are
just better at jobs than other people. By letting farmers buy and sell land, good farmers could buy
land from bad farmers and produce more crops on that land. These two factors resulted in a
phenomenal increase in agricultural production, and the wealth of the government and individual
farmer increased significantly (though most farmers never became “wealthy.”)
The most important economic innovation of the Song was the widespread use of money.
China was the first country to use both paper and coin money. This helped China in 2 ways. First
off, peasants used to have to pay their taxes in grain. The Song Dynasty now allowed farmers to
pay their taxes in money. Since they no longer needed to grow grain, this freed up weak farmers to
sell their farms and go get jobs they’d be better at in cities. Anytime you give people more freedom
to choose their jobs, the economy will improve as they get jobs they’re better at. Secondly, before
the widespread use of money, trade had to be done as bartering – people exchanged goods for other
goods. If a farmer wanted to buy a goat, then he and the goat’s owner would have to come up with
some sort of trade. “I’ll give you half a cow!” Obviously, that’s an awkward way to do things. So
the use of money made trade MUCH easier, and the economy increased due to this! The booming
economy led to the growth of cities. The city of Kaifeng eventually had a population of 250,000
households. The city of Hangchow had a population of 391,000 households. Compare that to
Europe during the same period: Rome had an average population of about 35,000 households and
London had a population of about 20,000 households. No civilization on earth was comparable to
China during the Song Dynasty.
Song Technology
These Chinese cities were bursting at the seams with
merchants and trade. What were some of the goods and inventions
that other cultures wanted? Merchants along the Silk Road
obviously made most of their money off the trade in porcelain and
silks. During this time period, China also invented a process to
make steel and began producing gunpowder weapons. The
demand for goods and services was so great that China began an
unprecedented acceleration of foreign trade. Chinese goods were
traded as far away as Africa and the Middle East. China also
created junks – the largest ocean-going vessels in the world at the
time that carried Chinese goods over the Indian Ocean all the way
to Africa.
China also built numerous canals. Canals are man-made rivers that allowed shipping and
transportation to new areas. The largest canal, the Grand Canal, was built to link the Yellow and
Yangtze rivers and make it easier to ship rice from the north to the
south, helping to prevent starvation and improving the economy.
Even though they were prosperous, the Song Dynasty also fell
like every other Chinese dynasty before it. This time, they were
overrun by a dangerous people to their north: the Mongols.
The Song Dynasty also saw the invention of the movable-type
printing press. Originally, if someone wanted to make a copy of a
book, they would have to write it all out by hand, which took a long
time. Using movable-type however, craftsmen created blocks of letters
like the type your future children will play with. When they wanted to
make a book, they would arrange the letters into a copy of a page.
While this took a long time, the printer could then roll ink over the
blocks and then use the blocks to make hundreds and hundreds of copies. This allowed a VAST
amount of books to be printed much more cheaply, causing literacy to be more widespread.
Questions:
Song Dynasty
1. Explain the TWO reforms made during the Song Dynasty that improved agricultural production
from farmers.
2. Explain how the use of paper and coin money gave peasants more freedom.
3. Explain how the use of paper and coin money increased trade.
4. What were two technological inventions made in China during this time?
5. What function did “junks” have?
6. What was the purpose of the Grand Canal?
7. Why was the invention of movable type so important in Song china?