Transcript Lesson: Tang and Song Dynasties

• Setting of standards
of excellence in art
and literature is why
Tang dynasty is
known as “China’s
Golden Age.”
• Landscape painting,
based on Daoist’s
emphasis of nature,
common.
• Masculine identity
came to be defined in
terms of painting,
calligraphy,
scholarship, and poetry.
• Discovered
gunpowder
(9th century).
• Spread along
the Silk Road.
• Triggered the
development
of cannons in
Europe.
•
•
•
Stopped labor tax.
Government paid
people for public
projects.
Increased money in
circulation, promoting
economic growth.
•
•
“Equal-field system”
(8th century), gave all
families land.
Reform failed due to
aristocracy bribing
government officials
to keep land.
•
•
Champa rice; fast-ripening rice native to Vietnam, allowed
farmers to grow two crops a year.
Chinese population, during the Tang and Song dynasties,
doubled (50 -120 million).
• Arab merchants from the Abbasid Empire revived the
land and sea routes of the Silk Road.
• Trade brought diversity, including a thriving community
of Arabs, in Hangzhou (city of over 1 million).
• Created “paper money.”
• The
transformation
of southern
China from a
subsistence
economy to an
export-oriented
economy was
due to the
Indian Ocean
trade.
•
Chinese interaction
with the northern
nomads during the
Tang dynasty resulted
in the evolution of a
mixed Chinese/Turkic
culture in northern
China.
•
Song
Dynasty
was most
urban
civilization
in the
world.
• “Scholar gentry” lower class men educated in
Confucian philosophy.
• Became most influential social class in China.
• Merchants were
lowest class.
• Didn’t produce
anything.
• Revival of
Confucianism led to
more restrictions on
women’s lives.
• The emergence of foot
binding during the
Song dynasty
suggests that Chinese
women’s lives were
more restricted than
they had been in the
Tang dynasty.
That concludes Song and Tang
Dynasties.