Song Dynasty

Zhao Kuangyin reunited much of China and founded the Song Dynasty (960 C.E.).

The Song was the Golden Age of China. Just about everything possible flourished: trade, fast growing rice, and the creation of paper money. There was surpluses which allowed people to pursue commerce, learning, and the arts.

The Grand Canal was built under the Song. Food was grown in the south and sent up the canal to the North. The Grand Canal reached its peak under the Song.

China was an ordered an ordered society. It had an emperor, aristocratic families, and a huge bureaucracy.

China had two main social classes: the Gentry and the peasantry. The Gentry was the wealthy land owning class. The Song scholar-gentry valued learning more than physical labor. Social order was based on duty, rank, and proper behavior. The ideal Confucian was a wise, virtuous scholar who knew how to ensure harmony in society. The merchants were on the lowest part of the social scale. Their riches came from the labor of others. An ambitious merchant might buy land and educate one son to enter the ranks of the scholar-gentry.

There was an abundance of rich culture. Artists painted harmony, architecture and porcelain were dominated by Buddhist themes, and Chinese writing had poetry, scholars producing philosophy, history and religion. There were short stories that blended fantasy, adventure and romance. They also invented gunpowder, the mechanical clock, block printing and the movable print.

The Song Dynasty was the greatest dynasty in China and perhaps even the world.

In the late 1200's the Mongols invaded and overthrew the Song Dynasty.