Song China

1. Song China • October 22, 2013

2. Review • Why did the peoples living in Japan learn how to work with bronze and iron at about the same time? • Why was the Japanese attempt to create a centralized bureaucratic government on the Chinese model so short-lived? • Were the reigning emperors the real rulers of Japan after the ninth-century? • Was the culture of Heian Japan much like the culture of China at that time?

3. Song China: shrinking China • Northern Song 960--1127 The Liao (Khitan) empire occupied what is now northern China, and the Xia controlled what is now northwestern China. Song paid tribute to both the Liao and the Xia • Southern Song 1127-1279 Jurchen (from Manchuria) forced the Song south of the Huai River. • Yet military weakness was accompanied by cultural brilliance and economic strength, and this was the time when gentry (literati) began to dominate Chinese life • Song produced a reformer, Wang Anshi, who tried to bring the economy under state control. However, he was not a “socialist.”(Socialism is a modern philosophy)

4. Northern Song • See Ebrey, p. 131 • Also go to http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/1xarsong.htm

5. Song, the Khitan, and the Xia • The Khitan (Qidan) win 16 prefectures south of the Great Wall, create the Liao dynasty. • Song has to pay them tribute: silk and silver • The Liao had a dual administration: one for Chinese and one for non-Chinese • The Xia out west also were able to force Song to pay them tribute. Song had to give them silk, cloth, silver, and tea • Korea is forced to shift its allegiance from Song to the Liao. Vietnam continued to be a tributary state of Song, as was Champa. Tibet was outside the Song tributary system.

6. The rise of the literati • Who are the literati? the land-owning, degree-holding Confucian scholar elite • By Song times, they have largely replaced the aristocracy of earlier dynasties (although imperial relatives remain aristocrats.) • Printing technology erodes the advantage the aristocracy had in obtaining the books needed to study for the civil service examinations. • Finally, we see substantial social mobility in China, but, at the same time, the power of the emperor is enhanced.

7. Song society • the royal family. • Confucian scholars • peasant • artisans • merchants • This is the official social order, not necessarily the way society actually looked. • Where are the warriors? Where are the priests?

8. Women in Song China • Unlike the Tang, Song had no female emperor, nor did it have a femme fatale like Tang’s Yang Guifei • It is under the Song that the patriarchal, patrilocal, and patrilineal ideal was firmly established. • Foot-binding appears– “the conspicuous consumption of women” by the upper-class. Also the dowry became more important. • Some argue that there are changes in concepts of both masculinity and femininity during the Song, and that foot-binding was introduced, not to subordinate women, but to make them look more “dainty.” Nevertheless, it crippled women

9. Southern Song • See Ebrey, p. 139 • Also go to http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/1xarsong.htm

10. Southern Song • Pushed south of the Huai river by the Jurchen from Manchuria, who established a Jin dynasty in the north. The Jurchen at one point captured the Song emperor. Song had to pay the Jin tribute of silk and silver. • Despite its military weakness, the Song prospered. In the Song, we see a commercial revolution in China. • Increased agricultural productivity, combined with cheaper transportation in the south, fuelled an expansion of traffic in commercial goods. The includes maritime commerce. • Song China led the world in iron and steel production. • But China did not have an industrial revolution. Instead, it moved toward a more labor-intensive economy.

11. The commercial revolution • Agricultural revolution: better manure, better seeds, better irrigation, more specialization • cheap water transportation made commerce more convenient • the use of paper currency also made commerce more convenient, though it created inflation (China had the world’s first paper currency). • no push for labor-saving machinery. Instead, China underwent an “industrious revolution,” in which, in agriculture, small plots of land were farmed more intensively. • Song gave birth to Chinese cuisine because increased commerce made a greater variety of ingredients available.

12. New-Confucianism • Confucianism acquires metaphysics: the Confucian response to the Buddhist denial of the ultimate value of life in this world. • li and Qi form a moral metaphysics. (The world is created by patterns of appropriate interaction directing matter-energy) • The Four Books became the fundamental texts for Confucians (the Analects, the Mencius, The Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learning). • Sincerity was a key value. Selfishness was the source of evil. • Neo-Confucianism is a manifestation of the pattern perspective, also seen in painting, pottery, poetry, and medicine.

13. Enter the Mongols • In the early 13th century, Chinggis Khan unites several nomadic tribes into a powerful Mongol fighting force, leading them in successful attacks against the Jurchen and the Xia. He conquers much of central Asia. • His grandson, Khubilai Khan, conquers the Song dynasty, creating the Yuan dynasty.