Prelude to the Song 1: Sui 14001375 y.a.

1
Prelude to the Song 1 Sui 1400-1375 y.a.

• Some 400 years passed since Han times, years of
  disunion and no central orthodoxy.
• The Six Dynasties in the south fared better than
  the north and set their capital at Nanjing
  former Han Chinese had established themselves
  throughout the south, bringing change to that
  region.
• Sixteen kingdoms rose and fell in the north to
  repeated invasion by nomads. Population declined
  from the 60 million in Han times.
• In the years of unrest, insecurity and hard
  lives, Buddhism gained a strong foothold it and
  Taoism inspired artists, philosophers and
  writers.
• Finally, in AD 689 began 300 years of Sui and
  Tang and the reestablishment of the Chinese
  ideal of unity.
• Both Sui and Tang founders came from the north
  and had married into the northern groups that
  took on Chinese culture. Their integration of
  Chinese language, culture, etc. was remarkable.
• Sui in its 40 years quickly produced a new legal
  code, brought order to local government, used the
  old equal field system that in theory allotted
  several acres of cultivable land to each adult
  male (a practice that was very ancient),
  continued the older systems of collective
  responsibility among groups of households, the
  territorially administered militia, and the
  military-agricultural commanderies on the
  frontier.
• Taxes were collected.
• Central government price-regulating granaries
  bought grain in times of surplus and sold it
  cheaply in times of shortage.
• Large public works were undertaken such as
  expansion of the Grand Canal to move food and
  commodities.
• The Sui assault on Korea exhausted state
  resources and failed.

2
Prelude to the Song 2 Tang 1375-1100 y.a.

• Tang (AD 618-906) founders were more prudent than
  Sui. They inherited Sui accomplishments,
  including a 5 X 6 mi. capital at Changan and a
  secondary capital at Luoyang. Barnes 193 Map as
  background
• Changan was the most splendid and cosmopolitan
  capital of its time. Fine arts, literature and
  poetry excelled.
• Tang continued the Sui practice of ruling through
  ministries (personnel administration, finance,
  rites, army, justice and public works)--an
  organization that lasted to the last century.
• Younger states in East Asia modeled their
  institutions after Tang.
• There was an early version of a countrywide
  examination system for prospective officials,
  stressing knowledge of the Confucian classics (as
  earlier, personal connections guanxi still
  dominated the process for entering officialdom).
• Armies succeeded against Korea, Vietnam, and
  along the Silk Road.
• Buddhism had changed over 500 years but was
  politically passive and not centrally organized
  therefore, Tang periodically increased control
  over it as an institution.
• As a moral force its learn proper moral
  behavior recalled Confucianism.
• Monasteries did charitable works (hospitals,
  etc).
• Monks recruited from high status families created
  a second elite.
• Buddhism claimed autonomy from government control
  taxes.

3
Prelude to the Song Tang Dynasty

• Examples of Song artpainting, ceramics

4
Prelude to the Song Tang Dynasty

• Technology and Science contributions of daoism.

5
Prelude to Southern Song 3 Tang 1375-1100 y.a.

• Late Tang (last 125-150 years) lost central
  power. Regional military posts had become the
  basis for a new provincial level of
  administration the Emperor had to cede power to
  the military.
• Local administrators amassed land and wealth.
• The land allotment system collapsed as did
  official markets and price-setting began to
  failgovernment had to backtrack from central
  control of the economy.
• The territory taxed was getting
  smaller--provinces exercised more autonomy and
  some opted out of paying taxes altogether.
• Market communities were emerging outside of
  imperial control.
• There was further decline of aristocratic/official
  families that since Han dominated
  government--having replaced the hereditary
  aristocracyand had managed to become an quasi
  hereditary.
• The Tang, originally northern non-Han, found the
  system of officially sponsored lists of great
  scholar families from whom most officials were
  selected obstructed the mobility of talent. Tang
  turned against the old practice early in their
  regime. Thus, over generations,
• Civil service was now the primary means for
  rising to high social status competition in the
  exam system increased.
• Official rank was more important than family
  origin--only if its sons survived the imperial
  exams could a family continue in officialdom and
  retain its place in the elite class.
• More than ever, performance on the exam (merit)
  was rewardedin theory, anyone could succeed who
  could obtain/afford the education.

6
Prelude to Southern Song 4 Tang 1375-1100 y.a.

• After Tang revived central power, Buddhism
  influenced Confucianism in its support of strong
  government.
• With inheritance shared among sons, family wealth
  was diluted over generations. Not all sons of
  formerly renown families were successful in
  obtaining posts within the civil service.
  Buddhism recruited from among these formerly
  wealthy, scholarly elite families, gaining the
  family wealth of the recruits as they entered
  poverty.
• Buddhism as an institution required monks and
  nuns to sever familial and societal ties.
• These men and women were removed from
  productive society, in the eyes of Tang
  political philosophy.
• Buddhist monasteries and nunneries amassed wealth
  through land ownership (and not paying taxes).
• Given all its other problems, Tang sought
  increasingly to exercise its control over the
  institution of Buddhism which it perceived as a
  threat. It was able to do so because Buddhism
  had ot developed a centralized governance or
  strong lay communities.
• By late Tang the government bestowed tites, sold
  ordination certificates, compiled a Buddhist
  cannon, and oversaw the selection of clerical
  talent through exams that included Confucian
  classics.
• While the crackdown was successful, Buddhism
  would prove influencial in the development of
  works.

7
Prelude to Southern Song 5 Tang 1100 y.a.

• An interesting internal contradiction had
  developed by the late Tang
• The rise of the Tang civil service renewed
  Confucianism, classical scholarship, state
  ritual, etc., on the one hand.
• The breakdown in moral rule--absence of loyalty
  to the emperor, rising cynicism and outright
  oppression of the common people, and the
  development of warlordism throughout the realm,
  on the other.
• The military governors surviving from the Tang
  and their successors set up centralized,
  personally led military regimes that became the
  model for government during the breakdown in
  central authority into the early Northern Song.
• After 50 years of serious unrest, Song
  established its dynasty about 1140 years ago.

8
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a.

• Here are some accomplishments of Song that made
  China the most advanced country in the world
  printed books, a civil service examination system
  (now widely accessible because of printing,
  florescence in painting, significant
  technological inventions (compass, gun powder for
  weaponry, etc.).
• The florescence was made possible by controlling
  the military and establishing a new civil power.
• Northern Song (AD 960-1126) was founded by a man
  who was commander of the palace guard in one of
  the post-Tang states and acclaimed by his troops
  as new emperorhe and his successor pensioned off
  the generals, replaced military governors with
  civil official, kept the best troops in the
  palace army, built up its bureaucracy from exam
  graduates, and centralized revenues.
• A creative renaissance ensued.
• Population rebounded (60 million in Han, maybe
  50-60 million in late Tang, and 100 million in
  early Song, for the first time concentrated along
  the Yangtze.
• Population growth brought the rise of city life
  the capital at Kaifeng was ½ million within the
  walls and ½ million in the suburbs.
• Next slide with pop. Maps from Fairbank 90-91

9
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a.

• Fairbank population maps 90-91

10
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a.

• State and Culture.
• We shall look at Song from several
  perspectivesfirst, as Chinas golden age in
  terms of culture in the more restricted sense of
  arts, literature, etc. second, under Song,
  government existed to maintain its centrality to
  all aspects of culture in the wider sense,
  particularly over economic matters and cultural
  diversification.
• Early China created a politicized state organized
  for the purposes of central control both by
  bureaucratic methods (philosophical persuasion)
  and the emperors use of violence.
• Non-Chinese invaders from Inner Asia became
  integral participants in the Chinese state by
  their military prowess and administrative
  skillthey became Chinese in their culture,
  dress, language, etc. (post Han and post-Song).
• The propensity for control was reinforced by Song
  Neo-Confucianism that stressed loyalty to
  authority in a hierarchic social order further,
  government esteemed agricultural self-sufficiency
  over foreign trade and contacts which were harder
  to manage.
• The printed book was the technological key to the
  growth of education under the SongNorthern Song
  was the first to have printed books.
• In this context, Chinese culture in the
  restricted sense permeated the local level,
  including the important development of gentry
  society, while central authority was harsher and
  less in touch.

11
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a.

• Urbanization was widespread. Kaifeng could feed
  this population by barge transport from the Lower
  Yangtze rice basket. Cheap interregional trade
  moved goods on the Yangtze, its tributaries, and
  the vast canal system (30,000 miles of navigable
  water).
• Industry developed at Kaifeng first to supply
  government coal and iron from the north (trees
  were wiped out locally).
• North China produced 114,000 tons of pig iron
  annually, twice what England could produce when
  it industrialized around 200 y.a.).
• Much iron and steel went to the war machine
  (mail, weapons).
• Proto-artillery (catapult) was used in siege
  warfare, gunpowder in fire-lances, grenades and
  bombardsno city could hold out on its stores as
  in earlier times. Unfortunately for Northern
  Song, Ruzhen barbarians readily adopted the
  technology and used it successfully against them,
  defeating Kaifeng 975 y.a. and sending Song south
  to Hangzhou.
• Printing using blocks with characters became
  widespread by Northern Song, giving a big push to
  education within Buddhist monasteries and within
  familiesat first seeking to control printing,
  government encouraged establishment of schools by
  giving land and supplying booksthe goal was to
  reach into every prefecture.
• The examination system endured for 1000 years for
  staffing the bureaucracy--the privilege by which
  higher officials could nominate their sons still
  operated they still dominated officialdom.
• The examination system played key a second role
  at this point--taking the exam became a
  certification of social statuswhether office
  followed or not! (This is the basis for gentry
  society).

12
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• Neo-Confucianism 1
• The call for reform within politics began with
  the Song and the examination system that
  guaranteed that all bureaucrats had the same
  educational background.
• Even for reformers, the underlying assumption was
  that the imperial autocracy was the origin of all
  political powerthey never sought to consider
  other forms of authority in state and society
  they regarded the common people as passive
  recipients of the benevolent despotism they
  sought to guide they assumed that merchants were
  addicted to greed and military men to violence
  and had to be kept in check.
• Fan Zhong-yan pushed reforms against favoritism,
  for practicality in subject matter, for land-hold
  for officials so they wouldnt be tempted to take
  bribes and favors, for strengthening the local
  militia, etc.
• Wang Anshi stressed the models of Chinas ancient
  sages through Confucius and was supported in
  by-passing the exams to put his own people in
  office to attack corruptions and inequalities in
  wealth through more central controls (e.g., knock
  out the private sector)the government would own
  all and dole it out his reform that sought to
  weaken family ties (to strengthen community),
  like others, was soon abandoned (but note the
  parallel to the early PRC).
• This Chinese conservative approach to keeping the
  imperial Confucian system going by trying to
  remedy its defects and avoid its problems led to
  implementing Neo-Confucianism (in early Southern
  Song)based on Zhu Xis compilation of writings
  into a broad philosophical view of the universe
  and the place of the individual within it by Zhu
  Xi.

13
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• Neo-Confucianism 2
• Song Neo-Confucianism believed that the true Way
  for individual moral improvement was set forth by
  Confucius and Mencius (and poorly served by
  so-called Confucians thereafter) they sought to
  repossess the Way of 1500 years earlier.
• Zhu Xi found a way to import Buddhist
  transcendentalism into Confucianismretaining its
  rationality but making it more humane. This
  Confucian humanism became the philosophy/ethical
  system of the Chinese elites to the 20th C.
• Zhu Xi encouraged the relative autonomy of the
  scholar to use his own judgment in interpreting
  classics (learning for the sake of learning, for
  self-cultivationnot simply learning for the
  test).
• The aim is rational, moral learning (more
  important than art and literature) key are the
  Five Relationships (son to father, etc.) to
  maintain social order and avoid polarization
  between individual and society (one seeks
  communion with others rather than cultivating
  individualism).
• The Community Compact was Zhu Xis mechanism for
  reaching the populace (piloted during Song but
  not institutionalized until Ming in the 1300s AD
  a monthly assembly led by elected heads in which
  hierarchy was important (age grades, rules of
  conduct for each category, etc.)within the
  Compact meeting good deeds were praised, errors
  corrected, rites and customs preserved as a means
  to mediate between the state and family).
  Methods of criticism and self-criticism
  resurface in the PRC, also as a form of applied
  morality.
• A note on Chinese scholarly methods Zhu Xi was
  part of a long line of Chinese thinkers who were
  compilers more than composerscut and paste the
  classics into a personal work that preserved the
  record of the past did not require attribution
  since all educated people knew and revered the
  knowledge of the classics.

14
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• Language and Culture
• Chinese language and cultural context, if you
  recall, made translation of Buddhist concepts
  difficult without changing their meaning and
  practice in China.
• Translating classical Chinese into modern Chinese
  or into another language poses comparable
  challenges, to the extent that some think the
  structure of Classical Chinese influenced Chinese
  thought more extensively/pervasively.
• Zhu Xis Neo-Confician writing contains the
  phrase gewu or ke-wu which is translated the
  investigation of things--
• This sounds to modern scholars as if he is
  advocating observation in the scientific sense
  however, scholars of Classical Chinese recognize
  the meaning in the Song context to be
  acquisition of moral knowledge through the
  careful study of the classics and scrutiny of the
  principles behind history and daily life.
• Classical Chinese had few ways to generalize or
  express abstractions easilysome think this
  contributed to difficulties in developing
  theoretical aspects of sciencean assertion we
  can only mention in passing.

15
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• The formation of gentry society in China 1
• During the Song, a social structure was
  established that lasted in its general outline
  until the 20th C. it is known as the
  scholar-gentry.
• Upper class families dominated Chinese life they
  were land-holders and had degrees (from the
  exams) recognized by the government.
• They served a dual functionin the political
  system and in the economic system.
• Within the scholar-gentry were those million or
  so men with first-level degreesthey were lower
  gentry or not much above commoner status.
• Few in number were the upper gentry who had
  gone on up through the three rigorous week-long
  examination rounds at the provincial or imperial.
  They had real influence.
• Gentry society was base on familism and it was
  dominated by men whose aim was to preserve its
  status by training sons to be scholars and
  degree-holders.
• By all accounts, boys educated to be scholars led
  lonely, dedicated childhoods without much time
  for frivolity or fun.

16
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• The formation of gentry society in China 2
• Gentry as individuals served as public
  functionaries in politics and administration
  they also were heavily dependent on/meshed with
  their families.
• Gentry families mainly lived in walled towns (not
  villages) and were local elites (between commoner
  peasants and officials and merchants who led
  administrative and commercial activities.
• In agricultural areas, gentry managed the system
  of customary and legal rights to the use of land
  (they also stockpiled goods against bandits and
  dominated the market towns).
• Gentry were the mechanism through which officials
  collected taxes (and the collecting from the
  peasants and providing them their only protection
  from officialdom).
• Gentry responded to official requests for help in
  time of war, flood, etc..
• At times when the state needed money, men could
  purchase literary degrees (without examination)
  and have a back door to gentry status.

17
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• The formation of gentry society in China 3
• Gentry were community leaders and expected to be
  committed to the upkeep of community facilities
  like canals, roads, etc. to participate in the
  Community Compact assemblies to support
  Confucian institutions and morals to set the
  tone of public life to organize and lead the
  militia in times of need. They set up charities
  for their clan members and handled trust fund to
  help the community. Theoretically, it could be
  that gentry
• Through local leadership and management functions
  are the reason why officialdom didnt penetrate
  lower down into Chinsee society, or
• Emerged to fill the gap between the early
  bureaucratic state and the peasant society that
  had grown beyond governments ability to control.
• Indeed, the territorial administrative structure
  since Han had not been growing while the Chinese
  population had doubled.
• The basic level counties or sub-prefectures
  totaled up to 1180 in Han with 60 million,1235 in
  Tang with 80 million, 1230 in Song with 110
  million, and so on to Qing with 1360 counties and
  425 million.
• The country magistrates responsibilities grew
  proportionatelyindeed, it was probably beyond
  the central governments ability to function
  directly.

18
(Northern) Song China 1040-(975)-720 y.a

• Imperial superstructure and control in Chinese
  governance
• Songs imperial government had 18,000 official
  posts Qings 20,000the number of imperial
  offices remained about the same as population
  doubledonly since Song, at the village level the
  gentry were the public functionaries.
• In 1850 under Qing there were 1.25 million
  scholarly degree holders.
• Continued superiority of the gentry families over
  the peasant mass was assured by their landowning
  and by the fact that the gentry produced the
  scholar-gentlemen (si) who carried on the
  cultural traditions of calligraphy, painting,
  literature, official life, etc.
• The strong historic Chinese ethos of order
  (therefore authority) should help understand
  Chinese government today
• In the past it related to the need to get along
  with family, manage family affairs, act
  appropriately within the complex status rules
  that were based on kinship, age, gender and law,
  and improve personal conduct.
• Striking overall is the degree of control to
  which everyone in society is subjected, including
  the masterthe ethical opinion of the group
  remains a strong factor.