'is a city all painted in gold, with the highest wall in th

1
The Capital Hangzhou

• Jacob Dancona
• is a city all painted in gold, with the highest
  wall in the world, together with many lakes and
  gardens, a thousand temples, fifty monasteries,
  more canals than may be found in Venice, four
  thousand bridges of stone and more than nine
  hundred thousand hearths
• It is the greatest city upon the earth,
  requiring four days journey to go round the
  walls

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• Hangzhou was on the Qian River, bordered by the
  West Lake and run through with canals
• The dynamic city was praised for its commercial
  hustle and bustle
• It was regarded as the hub of the universe.

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Imperial Palace

• The emperor lived in a grand marble palace with
  more than five thousand rooms, all adorned with
  gold and jewels.
• he is surrounded by eunuchs, scribes, servants,
  astrologers, women and others given to idleness,
  together with keepers of the animals of the
  emperor, as masters of the hawks and gyr-falcons

4
Hangzhou Housing

• Housing
• Basic materials wood, bamboo, bricks, tiles
• Some peasants gave up cultivation of rice for
  forestry work and sold wood to merchants in the
  city
• Stone, considered noble material fit for
  ornamentation and carving, was reserved for the
  ramparts, dykes, and for Buddhist towers

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• Curved roofs (roofs with upturned edges) were
  reserved for the houses for people of high rank
  and for government buildings
• Ornaments in the forms of aigrettes and small
  terracotta animals, dragons and phoenixes, were
  placed on the ridge and eaves of roofs on the
  houses of nobles and officials, as well as on
  govt buildings. They were forbidden to the
  common people

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Structure of Houses

• Exterior Gardens with man-made natural scenery
• Little artificial hills, winding streams with
  waterfalls, ponds in which swam gold and silver
  fish, referred to as long-life fish
• Rare flowers, pine trees, rocks, miniature
  mountain, dwarf trees

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• Interior
• Rectangular tables, little pedestal tables,
  armchairs, circular stools, light chairs known as
  barbarian seats
• Beds made of wood or black lacquer (red lacquer
  reserved for the emperors use)
• Scrolls, usually landscapes, and fine specimens
  of calligraphy covered an entire wall.
• Antique vases and terracotta animals.
• Flowers jasmine, peonies, chrysanthemums,
  daphne, magnolia and orchids blossoms of fruit
  trees such plum, pear, peach, pomegranate and
  cheery

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Personal Toilet

• A special taste of bathing was highly developed
• Bathing and washing the hair were regarded as an
  important operation
• Official salaries were known as emoluments of
  the bath and hair washing

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• Baths were taken for pleasure many public
  bathing establishments were available (ca. 3,000)
• Bathing was accompanied by services such as
  massage, tea, alcoholic drinks
• Extreme cases found in some bath maniacs such as
  Mi Fu (1051-1107), an eccentric painter and
  calligrapher, who had a religious phobia for dirt
  of any kind and who washed his hand every few
  minutes.

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Women and Cosmetics

• Wore make-up that consisted of a white
  foundation, with powder of a deep rose shade
  placed on the cheeks
• Covered their faces in winter time with a kind of
  ointment with a vegetable base
• Took great care of their nails
• Tinted their nails with a product made up from
  pink balsam leaves crushed in alum

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• Put oil on their hair to make it smooth and
  shining
• Plucked the eyebrows and penciled them in with a
  black line, which is thought to make it more
  attractive
• Wore perfume sachets hung from their girdles

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Cooking

• Hundreds of names of dishes served in Hangzhous
  innumerable restaurants and taverns
• Hanzhou had several varieties of regional
  cooking, because a large number of refugees and
  temporary visitors assembled in the city
• Predominant cuisine was a combination of that of
  Henan and that of Zhejiang
• Other regional cuisines were also popular
  Sichuan, Shandong and Hobei, Quzhou

Famous Song dish Xihu cuyu (West Lake Vinegar
fish)
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Drinking and Eating

• Wine made from grapes, raisins and dates became
  popular with wealthy families.
• Common people remained loyal to rice-wine (ca. 54
  kinds)
• Milk and cheese were absent.
• Tea enjoyed extraordinary vogue. Large teahouses
  had paintings and calligraphies displayed.
• Teahouses also sold salted soybean soup and
  plum-flower wine.
• Water teahouses were pleasure houses in
  disguise.

Longjing Xiaren (Longjing shelled shrimps)
Songsao yugeng (Madame Songs Fish Broth
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Food

• Food for low classes
• Rice, pork, fish formed the main diet
• Offal liver, lights (lungs), kidneys and tripes
• Cooked food sold by street peddlers at any time
  of the day
• Food for the well-to-do
• Foul, geese, mutton, shell-fish and fresh fish of
  al kinds
• Exotic dishes shell-fish cooked in rice-wine,
  goose with apricots, lotus-seed soup,
  pimento-soup with mussels, fish cooked with plums

Dongpo rou (Dongpos Pork)
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Families in Hanzhou

• Children were asked to protect the status and the
  power of the family
• The birth of a boy generally more favorably
  viewed, but birth of a girl not viewed with
  disfavor
• Girls could be placed in rich families as
  concubines companions, embroiderers, actresses,
  zither-players, chess-players, cooks
• Wealthy merchants welcomed girls, and married
  them off to scholars families

YIngxi tu (Children Playing)
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Children

• Poverty obliged poor peasants to have their
  children separated from them, and sometimes drove
  them to infanticide
• Newly-born infants, if not drown, were abandoned
  in the streets

Song childrens clay toys, preserved at Northwest
University, Xian
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Marco Polos Account of Foundlings

• In those provinces of South China, they are
  wont to expose their new-born babes I speak of
  the poor, who have not the means of bringing them
  up. But the King Emperor used to have all those
  foundlings taken charge of, and had note made of
  the signs and planets under which each was born,
  and then put them out to nurse about the country.
  And when any rich man was childless he would go
  to the King Emperor and obtain from him as many
  of these children as he desired.

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Chinese Account of Foundlings

• In the Song period, there were offices for the
  protection of children in all prefectures. If a
  poor family had a child which it could not afford
  to bring up, the parents were allowed to hand it
  over to this administrative body. Note was taken
  of the exact date of birth, and the child given
  into the charge of a nurse. Families who, on the
  other hand, wanted to adopt children could come
  and get them from the foundling hospitals. In bad
  years, crowds of babies were brought there. Thus
  there were no new-born infants abandoned in the
  streets.

Jiaoyin jiqiu tu (Playing Ball under the Shade
of Banana Tree), Anonymous, Song
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Children were brought up to be affable, gentle
and obedient taught to follow the rules for the
art of living
Kids playing in a small yard, anonymous, Song
Kids playing In Autumn Yard, Su Hanchen, Song
detail
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Upbringing and Education

• Education was highly valued
• Public and private education flourished because
  of the urbanization, the growth of urban middle
  classes, and the spread of printing
• Number of candidates for the civil service
  examinations increased rapidly
• The increase of high quality private academies
  and public schools
• Educated women also increased number of
  literate, literary and writing women increased
  dramatically

Baizi xichun tu (One Hundred Lads Paying in the
Spring, anonymous
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Entertainments in Hangzhou

• The streets of Hangzhou
• Acrobats, Jugglers, mountebanks (persons selling
  quack medicines), musicians, storytellers
  exhibited their talents
• Commercialization of art paintings, calligraphy,
  antiques reached a wider circle

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• Large number of organized societies formed by
  people sharing the same interest Poetry society,
  archery and cross-bow society, football and polo
  society, puppeteers society, Daoist association
• Special pleasure grounds were made available
  for all kinds of amusements
• singing, dancing, shadow plays, marionette
  theaters, storytelling, acrobatics, juggling,
  wrestling, magic, snake-charming, martial art
  demonstration and tournament

Song brick sculptures about acrobat