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History of the Southern Song dynasty

Twenty thousand high officials, tens of thousands of office staffers, and over four hundred thousand military personnel, all with their families fled the loess plains of the north to the rivers and streams of the south.  Upon the establishment of the new, supposedly temporary, capital in the south at Hangzhou, these people set about lamenting their loss and nostalgically remembering the old capital of Kaifeng the way it had been before the Jurchen invasion.  Meng Yuanlao is known only because he wrote A Record of the Dream of the Eastern Capital’s Splendor and Zhang Zeduan because he drew Peace Reigns Over the River, the famous Qingming scroll.

Fighting with the Jin dynasty, which the Jurchens had established as they took over north China, continued until 1141.  Many people still opposed the decision to stop fighting to get their homeland back.  The empire simply did not have the military power, however.  The treaty that the Song signed with the Jin in 1141 was humiliating to the Chinese.  Nevertheless, the Southern Song enjoyed great economic prosperity as the commercial revolution continued.

Paper and printed books allowed the exchange of knowledge to take place on an unprecedented scale.  Yet this and commercial growth, supported by the navigable Yangzi river and and tributaries, did not lead to a full-scale industrial revolution or a questioning of monarchs right to rule, perhaps because unlike later Western culture the humanities were considered much more important than science.  But the Chinese did have science and technology: mathematics; astronomy and the instruments that aided it; hydraulics, including hydraulic clocks that would be accurate for two to three months; medicine and the taking of the pulse; then anatomy and the carving up of dead people; describing diseases; using drugs; metallurgy; and drilling wells with bamboo.

Markets expanded.  Settlers going south learned how to drain swamps, which reduced the risk of illnesses such as malaria, and control the flow of water, which allowed more effective growing of rice.  Rice with a much shorter growing season entered China from Vietnam in the early years of the Song and it was combined with tastier, better-storing indigineous rice to make hybrid strains.  These new, improved, double-croppable types of rice increased production and as a consequence freed more of the working population from having to grow their own food; more workers were now available to produce goods for market.  Economic change varied by region.  Parts of china came to specialize in such industries as iron production.  The reach of many dieties expanded with the markets.  Each district in China had temples for local gods, some of whom had once been human beings and others that were nature deities.  Customarily thise gods performed miracles such as bringing favorable weather, preventing locusts and plagues, and warding off the dangers of childbirth.  With the continued increase in market activity deities took on the power to bring success in trade or safety on a journey.  People often painted the image of their district’s deity on their boats.  With the national market (particularly in rare, luxury, or special items) popular gods had the potential to spread from being local to regional or even national.

Shrines to worthy men, often located in schools or Confucian academies, were for men who had performed good deeds.  Often they were statesmen, officials, generals, or writers; they were not considered to have divine powers.  The shrines honored the dead and were meant to inspire the living to emulate their accomplishments.  The honoring of these worthy men also shed their local character in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Three men came to have shrines built all over south China: Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073), Cheng Yi (1033-1107), and Cheng Hao (1032-1085).  Zhu Xi commemorated these men and over came his own objections to the honoring of people in places they had never visited; Zhu Xi would himself would join these men in many of their shrines.

Despite many changes, Chinese society had stability in cultural identity and a set of institutions that derived from the emperor’s authority that remained in effect.  Furthermore, the family, considered the fundamental building block of society, was a source of relative stability.

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) attempted to create a synthesis of all Chinese thought.  Specifically, he sought to put together the ancient classics with the Song dynasty’s new science.  He advocated research: “Investigate all Things.”  Zhu Xi’s work became well-known after his death.

The factional politics created by the dispute between the classicists (originally led by Wang Anshi and favoring bold policy changes) and historicists (originally led by Sima Guang and favoring incremental reforms aimed at cutting taxes by cutting expenses) resulted in an official post no longer being a sure thing.

Gentry Class

These local elites were:

• Confucian scholars
• Government officials
• Landlords (the largest group), and
• Rich merchants.

The archetypal gentry family had all four groups.

This gentry class produced the leaders that work for government.

Still, official posts were largely based on merit so there was a relatively large degree of social mobility.  “Up and down in three to five generations” was a saying that captured the idea that effort and skill brought families to the top but laziness engendered by being at the top of society typically brought families down again.

The gentry class became the sponsors of art and literature in place of the aristocracy; they were in fact the poets and the painters— the people who don’t do manual work.

The open exams, administered in cubicles over several days at a time, had a pass rate of only about 1%.  Often after taking the exams seven or eight times the member of the gentry family would get an honorary degree but not a post.  There were an extremely small number of bureaucrats.  Even with a staff there were too many people in each district for the official government to exercise any real control.  Thus many people who were not officials were agents of the government.

The gentry had to perform government-like local services without pay.  Their specific functions included: maintaining hospitals, Confucian temples, roads, and canals; running ferries; giving speeches on morals; commanding the local militia; and operating a private education system, for the public universities no longer existed.  In return they received social status and, economically, relaxation of taxation.

For example, the local elite had a special low tax rate.  They would then pretend to own other people’s land so that these regular people, for a small fee, could get the lower tax rate.  Everybody benefited except the government.

Clans became really organized in the Song; this is the time period most Chinese today can trace their ancestry back to.

continue to the history of the Liao