Song Dynasty
Starting in 960 and ending in 1279, the Song Dynasty which followed the Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten States and preceded the Yuan Dynasty in China consisted of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126) and the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). With a prosperous economy and radiant culture, the Song Dynasty was considered as another period of ´golden age´ after the glorious Tang Dynasty (618 – 907).
The Northern Song was founded by Zhao Kuangyin, a military general in the Latter Zhou Dynasty (951 – 960). In 960, Zhao Kuangyin launched a mutiny in Chenqiao county (in current Henan Province).It was not long before the last king of the Latter Zhou was forced to abdicate. Thus a new dynasty – Song Dynasty was established in Kaifeng. In that period, most part of China´s territory was unified. However, in late Northern Song, the political corruption was serious and the regime began to decline. In 1127, the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty (1115 – 1234).
The Southern Song Dynasty was set up by Zhao Gou, son of the last emperor of Northern Song. After Jin defeated the Northern Song, many imperial clansmen were captured by Jin´s army. Fortunately, Zhao Gou had a luck escape. In 1127, he fled to Nanjing Yingtianfu (in current Shangqiu of Henan Province) and established the Southern Song Dynasty there. Later, the capital city was moved to Lin´an (currently Hangzhou City in Zhejiang Province).The Southern Song´s regime was subject to the Jin Dynasty. Many patriotic generals were killed in the late period. In 1279, the army of the Yuan Dynasty captured Lin´an, putting the Southern Song to an end.
Arts, culture and economy
The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners – the mercantile class – arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.
Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.
The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late 19th century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi´s philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the 19th century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.