Hello and welcome to another Students of History flipped classroom lesson. Today we're looking at Tang and Song China, two dynasties through China's dynastic cycle in the classical era, you might call it, two golden ages in Chinese history, a lot of innovation that occurred and wealth. As always you have guided notes sheets that you can use to to follow along with these lessons that are perfectly aligned with what we'll cover and highlight the key points.
So starting off, the previous dynasty would be the Sui Dynasty. They reunited China after, you know, a long period of disintegration. You had the previous, you know, powerful dynasties like the Han Dynasty in particular, which really unified China, but there was a period of breakdown, you know, and warlords in control.
and a long period of rough times for China. But the Shui dynasty was established by Emperor Wen, who ruled from 581 to 618 in the common era here. He was really a hard-working guy. He was a bit of a micromanager, to use a modern term for him.
They show the records that historians have used. was withdrawn from the Confucians and he really gave it to really an authoritarian style government. He was a Buddhist and he really encouraged the spread of Buddhism throughout China.
He does reunify it, so it had been over 200 years here. One of the most important things, though, he began the construction of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is, to this day, one of the longest canals in the world. It's an artificial river. It started in Beijing and passed through various provinces, Hebei, Tian Shan, Shandong, to link the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
It's over a thousand miles, over eleven hundred miles. A massive, massive man-made river that really expanded trade throughout China. It was important for unifying the empire.
Of course, though, Through the dynastic cycle there's going to be a downturn and the forced labor on the canal and improvements to the Great Wall of China, high taxes and almost near constant warfare in Korea and Manchuria are going to lead to revolts against the empire and the Shui dynasty will fall out of favor. And that is when the Tang Dynasty emerges. The Tang Dynasty is going to come from the Li family, which was this northwestern military aristocratic family that was prevalent during the Shui dynasty.
They claim to be descended from the Daoist founder Laozi. And you have here General Li Yuan. He is on the right there and his 16 year old son.
Not 16 in that picture there, it's an older picture of him, but his 16-year-old son, Li Ximing, they are going to conspire to overthrow. It's funny, this 16-year-old kid is really the one who convinced his father, hey, we could do this. You're strong enough.
You're a powerful warlord. We can overthrow this dynasty. They're weak.
So the son, who even at that young age is obviously very precocious, encourages his father, a brilliant general, to overthrow the Shui dynasty. They are successful. And General Li Huan becomes the new emperor of China, establishes the Tang Dynasty.
Well, that son is even more precocious and he's going to conspire. Supposedly he kills his brothers and then forces his father to step down in 626 so that he could be the new emperor of China. He didn't even want to wait around for his father to die.
He kills off all his brothers so he has no competition. This guy is a, you know, obviously devious but brilliant general, brilliant government reformer, a calligrapher. He's really one of the more admired emperors in Chinese history.
When he does overthrow his father in 626, he assumes the name Tang Taizong, and he's really going to be the one who begins this golden age, this next golden age in China, the reign of Zhengguan. It's called... It's going to be studied by future emperors, you know, for how he conducted his government and how he was able to, you know, bring wealth back to China, encourage trade throughout the empire. And this Tang dynasty will last quite a while and we'll look here at it more in depth.
So here's a map here of the Tang Dynasty. This will animate as you'll see. It will begin to grow starting in the year 700 there in the Tang Dynasty.
They're going to really create a powerful empire. It's going to grow through China. They're going to first look to Korea and they're going to ally with a kingdom known as the Silla.
The Silla Kingdom. Korea at the time was known as There were really three kingdoms, the three kingdoms of Korea period. So they're going to ally with one of them, Silla, to defeat really the larger one, the Goguryeo Empire, which is where Korea gets its name from through centuries of translation and whatnot.
But the Goguryeo Kingdom of Korea, they're going to defeat them in this long war in Korea. It's known as the Goguryeo-Tang War. It lasted over 20 years, fought there. And the Tang were repeatedly, repeatedly defeated in Korea, but finally when they allied with Silla, they were able to become victorious.
That was then followed by a war with Silla, who, you know, there was some tension there after the two were allied victorious, then they win, and then it's like, oh, well, then they go and fight each other. Meanwhile, on the other side of the map there, off to Central Asia, they're fighting each other. The Tang Empire was fighting wars there also, expanding into the Turkish territory and the Turks into Central Asia. And that's why this map keeps repeating itself, this animation overview. You can see the years there in the bottom.
There's a lot of Chinese characters here in text. You can see 863 and as the years progress it grows to encompass quite a massive territory throughout China. Well there is one interregum, they call it, like a brief pause in the Tang Empire, and that is when the Empress Wu Zixian is going to hold power. She is the wife of Emperor Gaozong of Tang. He was in power from 628 to 683. He was the third Tang Emperor.
She supposedly, through all the records, is much more decisive, much more proactive, a brilliant woman, and really a her husband allowed her to, you know, do many things in government. Well, then her husband has a stroke in the year 660, and Empress Wu Zetian effectively becomes the Empress of China. Well, she's going to manipulate things, as many of these emperors often do who come to power, and she supposedly has one of her sons, Li Hong, poisoned. She supposedly has another one of her sons exiled and then forced to commit suicide, so that when... Gao Zong is Dai's, she becomes the Empress Regent or the Empress of the Zhu dynasty as it comes to be known.
A brilliant woman and one of the only, the only woman actually in Chinese history to assume the title of Emperor. There will be Empress Regents, Xi Shi will be a famous one centuries and centuries later, but they are, you know, ruling while their sons are very small or little or you know growing up she is really the only one who will actually assume the title of emperor and her reign this dynasty lasts 15 years from 690 to 705 and then she will take on the name her Wu Zixian, Wu Zao was her the name there so and she will you know do quite quite a few things for the Tang dynasty although her her own personal dynasty since she is sort of takes control for herself. Very wealthy, she will continue on with some of the conflicts that are raging, whether it's in Korea or in the West, and will be a very effective ruler of the Chinese people, strengthening the empire, strengthening the government through all respects, but she will pass away and then it goes back to the Tang empire. And one of the most important aspects for us to look at of the Tang Dynasty is the civil service bureaucracy. I looked a little bit about this when it began during the Han Dynasty.
But this picture in the background here shows all the candidates for the bureaucracy gathering around to see the test results posted. This is known as releasing the roll when they would all wait to see their scores on the famous test. The Tang rulers revived the civil service examination system. This is known as the qi ju, where it's a system for selecting candidates to work in government for the government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like a big, big, you know, form of government, but there's a lot of pieces that go into it and you can get a job in the government.
Well, in order to do that, you have to take these classes, you have to pass this test, and then you can get a job in government. It's thought to be, you know, a very democratic way of doing it because in theory it's open to everyone but really it costs a lot of money to take the schooling, to get the schooling in order to do well on the test, to take the test. The exams are only open to men, they're not open to women anyway, so it's really only the wealthy men of China who have this ability even though it's meant to be more democratic and open to everyone. It's still very limited in who can really do it.
But the concept of choosing bureaucrats to serve in government by merit, you know, by their ability, as opposed to just by birth of the aristocracy, you know, really is one of the important parts of Chinese history and one of the important parts that, you know, goes to our, you know, our own countries today. This system will become dominant during the Song Dynasty, our next dynasty that we'll look at, and it'll last all the way up to 1905. The 1900s is when this civil service bureaucracy will last. And this growth of scholar officials will, in theory, cut the power of some nobles who would just, you know, expect their children to get a fancy high-paying job in government just based off their last name. You can still see some of these examination cells.
These would be where the kids or men would take the tests, you know, to prevent cheating. They would have these little cells that they would take their tests in. This is Beijing.
Here you can see they're taking their tests. The emperor is receiving a candidate. This is from the Song Dynasty. They'd be studying their classical texts to study up for the exams, and then they would take the test in those cells. So, of course, we know through the dynastic cycle, the Tang Dynasty will eventually decline.
There's some rebellions that are going to take place, most famously the An Lushan Rebellion. It was this massive rebellion that replaced, actually took a whole piece of China. and created a Yan Dynasty. It was led by this military general who was rather brutal, An Lushan. But it's, you know, there's corruption, there's drought, there's famine, there's natural disasters, there's high taxes, you're going to have these rebellions.
The An Lushan was the biggest rebellion. It really cut into the Tang Dynasty's power. A later rebellion known as the Huang Chao Rebellion further weakened it to the point where in 907, A warlord was able to overthrow the dynasty and that will eventually become, you know, the end of the Tang Dynasty. There's a long period, well, not relatively long, you know, 70 years of intense division across China where there is no one single united emperor.
That's known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period because there were five dynasties who claimed power in ten different kingdoms throughout China. But China will become united again, and that is through the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty will be founded in 960, but over a case of about 19 years for them to really gain control of the entire country.
This here is Song Taizu, the first emperor, you can see him there, of the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty will last, you know, a few hundred years into 1279. They are going to... restore China, reunite China under one emperor, but they're going to face constant threats from outside invaders, most notably the Mongols, who are a very, very frightening threat from the steppe. You know, the Mongol Empire are a constant threat, so they were spending a lot of money on defense.
But however, they're also going to do a lot of innovations happen during this period in China, especially, I skipped a little. Too quickly there, but we'll look at some of these innovations here. One of the most important ones is the first use of paper money, the song.
were the first to really truly issue paper money. Before this there were coins and they were attached to string but the paper money is known as jiaozi. These were really promissory notes.
They didn't interestingly have denominations. So this one that we see here is a recreation. So this paper money wouldn't be you know five dollars. It could be whatever you wanted it to be and you write it in there and it would be sealed or stamped with an official seal. that would verify it as currency and then you can trade it back and forth.
Also an important innovation here were these ships. These are known as junks, a junk ship with the Malay sail there. The Song dynasty was the first to establish a standing navy, a permanent navy, using these ships.
They were wooden, they're all based up built out of wood, but they could hold many sailors. Some of them were quite large. This sail you see here is known as the Malay sail. They would be used for the military, they would be used for trade, and they really became the backbone of the Chinese navy. One of the most important innovations of Song China was the use of gunpowder.
Gunpowder was first used for fireworks, interestingly, in China, but then they realized the military possibilities of gunpowder using it. really flamethrowers, grenades, bombs, firearms, cannons, land mines to ward off. That was one of the ways that the Song Dynasty was able to fight back against the Mongols. A much stronger army for a long time was its use of gunpowder.
And also helping with trade and travel was really the first use of a compass that could point to true north. Now the Chinese had had compasses for a long time, but discerning, you know, there weren't always very accurate, but this new compass that they developed could be much more accurate determining north. More innovations in China.
This is a golden age of science, of art, of poetry. Two well-known polymaths, kind of like Leonardo da Vinci. Think of da Vinci was good at everything.
Well, so were Su Song and Shen Kuo. They were brilliant mathematicians. They were brilliant scientists.
Image here is a massive mechanical clock that was built for, you know, incredibly accurate telling of time. Su Song developed, you know, many areas, was well skilled in many areas of science. This is Su Song's astronomical clock here.
You see it kind of shows the inside and the outside of it there, that sketch. Also, a great period of... Writing and poetry in particular, Li Bo and Du Fu were well-known poets.
This is a golden age of Chinese literature. Wang Wei was another one. Very simplistic, naturalistic poems came out of this period that are still studied in China today. And also silk. paintings.
Beautiful silk artworks have come out of this period. Of course, at this time, silk was still massively valuable to the Chinese, a state secret. They wouldn't let anyone else know how to make silk, and they could paint on it as well.
Another interesting thing that came out of this period, you see here, look at these. These guys are all gathered around a ball. If you look at the bottom, this is the first earliest documented version of soccer or football.
originally came out of the Han Dynasty. FIFA, the FIFA organization, acknowledges this is really the first evidence of a football kind of game where you could not use your hands. It was kicking. It was played in China during this era. Looking more at life in China during this period, you have Buddhism spreading throughout China.
This image here is the Lashan Buddha that was constructed. during the Tang Dynasty. Buddhism is going to spread through trade, but a new philosophy is going to develop, especially during the Song Dynasty of a Neo-Confucianism, a new Confucianism that is going to become very prominent throughout China. It's going to reject some of the more mystical, superstitious elements of Taoism and of Buddhism and really just kind of focus on the spiritual.
What's tangible and what's real in a sense of morality and how to act as a good person and not being so much a less away from a religion and more towards a philosophy. You know, a lot of the Chinese Taoism, Confucianism kind of straddle that line sometimes. Well, Neo-Confucianism moves away from the mystical, away from the superstitious, the religious and more towards a philosophy.
Literature during this time period and a lot of this religion is going to spread and this philosophy is going to spread through woodblock printing and the invention of movable type. Before this books of course were all written by hand but with woodblock printing and movable type books can be printed and mass produced and then you know it can spread from there. Of course, the Song Dynasty is going to decline through the dynastic cycle.
A series of internal conflicts, civil wars in a sense, between various warlords and claimants to the throne are going to occur. The Jin-Song Wars were a series of conflicts between the Jin dynasty that really wanted to claim control of China. The Jin were a group of people from northern China, Manchuria. For a period, they are going to gain control and it's going to be the Southern Song.
So the Song Dynasty is just now in southern China while the Jin are up in northern China. The Jin Song Wars are going to last for quite a while, dividing China, weakening China to the point that the Mongols now can move in. The Mongols, of course, you probably know them from Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan, conquer the Jin in 1234. take over that area.
Then they will move forward and conquer the Song Dynasty in 1279. And it is Kublai Khan, the Grand Khan of the Mongol Empire, who will conquer the Song Dynasty in 1279, conquer China, proclaim himself the new emperor of China, and that is going to establish the Yuan Dynasty, which is the period when really the Mongols ruled China. This image here shows a Mongol soldier on horseback with his bow and arrow. You know, what the Mongols are most famous for being a nomadic people from Mongolia, famously conquering China.
And when Kublai Khan did, you know, it was a total new age for China where the Mongols ruled China. But he did have great respect for the Chinese people, you know, and we'll make this cross-cultural connections that we will look at in a later lesson. So I hope this...
flipped classroom lesson was helpful for you in better understanding the Tang and Song dynasty eras of China. Stay tuned for more flipped classroom lessons in the future. Take care everybody.