The document provides an overview of the Tang and Song dynasties in China. The Tang dynasty unified China in the 600s and had a prosperous cultural golden age, but gradually declined. The Song dynasty then ruled China from 960-1279 and oversaw major economic developments through trade, industry, and agricultural innovations, but struggled militarily against neighboring empires. Neo-Confucianism became influential and emphasized social obligations and family roles.

1. Chapter 12
The Era of Tang and Song
Dynasties

2. RECAP
 Great Wall – 221 BC;
 Spread of Buddhism
 Confucius believed a woman’s duty was to
ensure the stability of the family and promote
harmony in the home. Correct behavior=order
and stability. Filial piety! And the Golden Rule!
 Legalism – the ruler alone possesses power,
strenth, not goodness, is the rulers best virtue.

3.  Han dynasty falls around 220, China is
divided until the 600’s (but Chinese culture
still flourishes, unlike the Western world!)
 Sui emerge around 580s, led by Wendi.
 Wendi
 re-establishes granaries to stabilize food supply
and prices
 lowers taxes
 reunites the traditional core areas of Chinese
civilization for the first time in 350ish years.

4. The Tang Dynasty
 Yangdi – murders Wendi (who is actually his
dad!)
 He’s so demanding that his ministers kill
him
 Turmoil?
 No. The Tang dynasty emerges in 618,
with Li Yuan’s help.
 Li Yuan – works with his son, Li Shimin, (who
encouraged him to lead a revolt) to crush all
the rivals and revolts and establish the Tang
dynasty.
 Play rivals off of each other
 Repair the Great Wall
 Li Shimin – within 8 years convinces dad to
step down, takes the throne, and names
himself “Tang Taizong”
 Tang Tiazong is a brilliant general,
government reformer, historian, and becomes
one of China’s most admired emperors.

5. More Tangs…
 Conquer territories in Central Asia
 “heavenly kahn” – vassal of Turkic Tribes
 Force Vietnam, Tibet, and Korea to become tributary
states.
 Tributary states: vassals who recognize China’s supremacy
and send tributes to the Tang emperor.
 Students from Korea and Japan travel to the Tang capital to
learn about Chinese govt, law, and arts.
 “Middle Kingdom” – China is central to the world around
them
 Tributary state envoys kowtow with their gifts
before the empire
 Subordinate lands normally did as they pleased,
more diplomatic, trade, and cultural exchange

6. Tang Empire

7. Tang Reforms
 Restored Han System
 Civil Service System and Uniform Govt.
 Jinshi – immediate elevation of social status for individual his
family
 Larger territory = increased demand for gov’t positions
 Scholar-gentry – help offset the pwr of land-holding aristocrats
 Now many more positions than during the Han era
 Land Reform – broke up large land holdings into
pieces for the peasants.
 Equal field system – upon death, a farmer’s land was
reallotted, only 1/5 remained under hereditary control
 Centralized power by removing power from large landowners
 Raised revenue by increasing number of people who would be
taxed
 Grand Canal links Huang He to the Yangzi R.
 Longest waterway ever made by human labor at this
point

8. Those Tang Arts…
 http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/history/video-popup-t
 Long sleeves
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/art/tang.htm
 Buddha, Buddha on the wall…
 Carved into rocky cliff sides, show tremendous
stone cutting and metal working abilities
 Horses and Camels
 Focus of artists and sculptors
 From along the Silk Road
 Foreigners
 From all over central Asia – another main focus
 Literature
 Described foreign foods, music, customs, and
polo (a aristocratic favorite from Persia)

9. Buddhism
 Xuanzang – Buddhist monk from China
 Travels to India c. 645 CE
 Brings back many Buddhist texts
 Forms many monasteries
 New sects emerge – including Chan (Zen)
 Focused on meditation to reach nirvana
 Monasteries and temples often have economic focus
 Operate mills and oil presses
 Perform banking services
 Owned a lot of land (and wealthy patrons would list their land as
belonging to the monastery to avoid state taxes)
 Much temple wealth went to the arts

10. Anti-Buddhist Backlash
 Daoist and Confucians feel threatened
 State does too – Buddhist monastic establishment poses a
fundamental economic challenge to imperial order
 Wuzong (841-847) lashes out
 Open persecution
 Thousands of monasteries and shrines destroyed
 Hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns flee/return to
civilian lives
 Slaves and peasants of Buddhist lands are forced out to work
the lands and are subject to taxation again
 Hatred doesn’t last, but the Buddhists definitely took a hit

11. Bye-bye Tang, Hello Song
 Tang dynasty weakens, corruption, drought, high taxes, famine, rebellions, etc; Tangs are
overthrown in 907.
 960 – three major states emerge
 The Liao Empire – Khitan people, Mongol relatives
 The Xi Xia (Tanggut) Empire – Minyak people, W China, had connections to the former
Tang
 The Song Empire – 960 military commander Emperor Taizu reunites much of China (never
quite as strong as the Tang Empire though)

12. The Song Empire
 Does unify China
 Run-ins with the Liao (Song pay
tributes to protect themselves
 Jurchens destroy the Liao capital
in Mongolia
 Proclaim Jin empire
 Continue exacting tribute from
the Song, take portions of their
land, force Song to relocate their
capital from Kaifeng to
Hangzhou
 Song dynasty – controls China for
316 (longer than Tang), but controls
less land
 960-1127 – “Northern Song”
 1127-1279 – “Southern Song”

13. Political Developments
 The Tang fell because…
 regional military commanders became independent
rulers who raised their own armies and collected
their own taxes
 Song – make the military subordinate to the civil
administrators of the scholar-gentry class
 Only civil officials can be governors
 Rotate military commanders from region to region
 Does it work? The Song’s have control, but their
military is much weaker
 Scholar bureaucrats actually leading Song armies in the
field sometimes (have hardly any military training)

14. Challenges with Bureaucracy
 Now for the district, provincial and imperial
level
 Standards adjusted (increases pass rate)
 Growing bureaucracy = stressed imperial
treasury
 Emperors try to raise taxes
 Peasants revolt
 More military needed to make peasants hush
 More imperial debt.

15. Industry and Production
 Papermaking
 Salt and Tea
 Deforestation, turn to other sources – coal!
 Master the ability to use coal to smelt iron, even develop steel
 Most advanced iron industry in the world
 Swords, armor, arrow tips, tools for farmers and craftsmen, stoves, nails,
needles, chains for suspension bridges, drill bits to make wells
 Gunpowder
 Wooden blocks to print entire pages
 Begin working on moveable type systems

16. Song Golden Age
 Wealth and culture dominate; military does not.
 Great Canal – improves agriculture by creating a
better irrigation system and increases trade
dramatically (land travel was expensive and
cumbersome)
 Agricultural surplus (improved irrigation system
and new strains of rice from Vietnam = success).
 Rise in agricultural productivity allowed people
more time to pursue commerce, learning, and the
arts.

17. Trade and Commerce
 Trade flourishes (Song porcelain found in E.
Africa!)
 Junks (Chinese ships) encourage trade
 Chinese actively trade, instead of waiting for traders to
come to them
 Horses, Persian rugs, and tapestries enter China
 Silk, Paper, and porcelain leave China
 Reopen Silk Road
 China issues paper money

18. Hangzhou
 The most impressive city of its time
 By end of Song times, 1,500,000 population
 Famously wealthy, clean, and diverse
 10 big marketplaces
 Marco Polo of Venice declared it “the most
noble city and the best that is in the world”

19. Chinese Society
 Gentry – wealthy landowning class, (only ones who
could afford to spend years studying to pass the
civil service exam). Many are Confucianists
 Peasants – self sufficient, “heaven is high, and the
emperor far away”
 Merchants – great potential/opportunity to acquire
wealth, (Confucianists believed merchants were
lower than peasants because their wealth came
from the labor of others)
 Women – status diminished after Tang and early
Song dynasty

20. Neo-Confucianism
 Appeal of Buddhism, causes a re-thinking of Confucianism
 Mencius (an old Confucian master), had written Zhu Xi, a commentary
on Confucius’s main works
 Places an emphasis on the importance of social life
 Rejects withdrawing from life for individual meditation
 Death penalty for children
 2.5 years hard labor for hitting your older sibling
 Brides and grooms usually the same age (unlike India) because Confucian
principles didn’t want to mix generations
 Allowed mutual consent divorce (India doesn’t)
 Advocated confining young women, emphasized importance of virginity of
young brides, fidelity for wives, and chastity for widows. (similar to India)
 Footbinding (a harsher, more constricting tradition than anything in India)

21. Foot binding

22. Foot binding

23.  Young girl’s feet would be bound with
long strips of cloth causing the foot to
be about half the size it would
normally become.
 Tiny feet and a stilted walk
represented beauty and nobility.
 This noble tradition filtered down to
the lower classes.
 Women whose feet had been bound
could not easily walk on their own,
further reinforcing the Confucian
concept that women should remain
inside the home.
 Only peasants who needed their
daughters to work in the field omitted
the practice.

24. Art and Literature
 Landscape painting –
“create a harmonious
relationship between
heaven and earth”

25.  Pagoda – Buddhist
themes influenced
Chinese architecture.
 Indian stupa evolved into
the graceful Chinese
pagoda.
 Chinese sculptors created
statues of Buddha as well.

26.  Porcelain – shiny, hard
pottery, prized as the
finest in the world.
Westerners later call it
“chinaware”

27. Chinese Inventions that Will Change
the World
 Compasses
 Gunpowder