China Popular Itineraries |
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Culture in the Dynasties of Song, Liao, Xia, Jin and Yuan |
The founding of China by the Northern Song Dynasty brought an end to the prolonged partition of the Five Dynasties and the Ten States and restored a unified central authority in China. The Song rulers came to realize that Tang's downfall was partly caused by the separatist rule of military gover-nors, who were too powerful and independent to be controlled by the emper-ors. So the rulers did their best to strengthen the feudal autocracy. But over-concentration of power in the royal house gave rise to the political corruption in the upper stratum of officialdom and weakened the defensive power of the Northern Song when confronted with military threat from the outside. And the result was that the bureaucracy became more and more inflated and redun-dant. Since the government had to put aside a fabulous sum for the upkeep of a legion of officials who drew fat salaries, the treasury became more and more depleted. Threatened by the aggressive Liao and Xia regimes on the north-western border, the Northern Song took an appeasement and passive policy by presenting them an annual gift of silver and silk in exchange for temporary tranquility on the northern border. Later, the state of Jin grew stronger in the northeast, and after conquering Liao regime, the Jin regime occupied the Yel-low River basin by force. The Emperor of the Northern Song fled south from Kaifeng and established his capital at Lin' an (modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province). The continuation of the Northern Song regime in the south of Chi-na is known to historians as the Southern Song. Up to the 13th century, the Mongols rose to become a powerful tribe. After vanquishing the regimes of Western Xia, Jin and Southern Song, Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty and reunited China.
Despite the troubles, internal and external, the economy, science, and culture continued to expand under the rule of the Song regime. The social pro-ductive forces still made headway. This was particularly true in the south, which quickly became the economic center of the whole country. During the Song period, the Chinese people further developed the art of printing, the making of the gunpowder and compass -- three great inventions of China as great contributions to the world. The technique of block printing reached its stage of maturity and flourished during the Song Dynasty. Books exquisitely printed in the Song Dynasty are still highly valued as rare editions today. Bi Sheng invented the movable type, which advanced the art of printing to a higher level. In the Song Dynasty, gunpowder was used in the war and the proportion of different elements in the composite gunpowder was close to that of today. The compass was employed in navigation in the Northern Song Dynasty. Shen Kuo, the great scientist of the Northern Song Dynasty wrote Sketchbook qf Dream Brook -- an indication of the splendid achievements made by the Song in natural science. This scientific encyclopaedia covered as-tronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, meteorolo-gy, medicine, and engineering technique.
The cultural representative of this period was Li Xue, a Confucian school of idealist philosophy, also known as Neo-Confucianism or Cheng-Zhu Li Xue school of confucianism. This new school, which was developed by combining Confucianism with Buddhism and Taoism, was pioneered by Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi in the Northern Song Dynasty and Zhu Xi in the Southern Song Dy-nasty -- the founders of Cheng-Zhu Li Xue school of Confucianism. The cen-tral conception of this philosophy was that of "heavenly principle" and "carnal desires". The heavenly principle was the mysterious origin of everything and the essence of the universe that transcended all material things. As feudal or-der originated in it, the former was a manifestation of the heavenly principle in social relations. Blinded by the desire for material gains, man could become vicious and violate the feudal moral standards. Therefore the Song Confucian-ists put forward the ethical slogan, "eradicate human desires to maintain the heavenly principle". The Li Xue school of Confucianism was the consummate ideological system in Chinese feudal society. It advocated nei sheng wai wang, meaning supreme morality internalized as cultivation and externalized as governance of virtue, and xiu shen qi jia zhi guo ping tian xia, that is, "Cultivate yourself, keep your family in order, run the local government well, and bring peace to the entire country". It espoused the necessity to place righ-teousness, good reputation and moral integrity above material gains. This ethics had both positive and negative influence on the society. The positive in-fluence lay in that it encouraged the cultivation of the scholars' morality, loy-alty to the sovereign and to the country. On the other hand, it exaggerated the working of heavenly principle, suppressed human nature, and caused tragedies of principle massacre, that is "killing people with the principle".
Unlike the energetic and daring martial spirit in Han-Tang dynasties, the prevailing social practice of this period was characterized by the trend in schol-ar-officials to pursue elegance and good taste, resulting in the weakening and refining of personality. Song Ci, poetry of the Song Dynasty, and Yuan opera represented the zenith of the literature during this period and the ple-beian culture gradually became popular. Besides, this period was another im-portant period of the merging of nationalities in Chinese history. Despite the confrontation between the Northern Song and nationalities of Dangxiang, Qi-dan and Niizhen, and the rivaling regimes of Southern Song and Jin, economic and cultural exchanges between the Han nationality and the nationalities of Dangxiang, Qidan and N¨¹zhen ended up with an integration between them. In the Yuan Dynasty, the unprecedentedly vast domain and easy communica-tions enhanced contacts between home and abroad. The formation of Hui na-tionality was in fact a fruit of the ethnic merging. |
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