| Shanghai Tour Guide |
| Chinese History |
| Chinese Geography |
| China Travel Tips |
| More Information |
Tang
Dynasty, the Golden Age (618-907) The Tang emperors set up a
political system in which the emperor was supreme and government officials
were selected on the bases of merit and education. The early Tang rulers
applied the equal allocation system rigorously to bring about a greater
equity in taxation and to insure the flow of taxes to the government.
A census was taken every three years to enforce the system, which also
involved drafting people to do labor. These measures led to an agricultural
surplus and the development of units of uniform value for the principal
commodities, two of the most important prerequisites for the growth of
commerce and cities. The Tang capital of Chang'an was one of the greatest
commercial and cosmopolitan cities in the world at that time. Like most
capitals of China, Chang'an was composed of three parts: the palace, the
imperial city, and the outer city, separated from each other by mighty
walls. The Tang was a period of great imperial expansion, which reached
its greatest height in the first half of the 8th century. At that time,
Chinese control was recognized by people from Tibet and Central Asia in
the west to Mongolia, Manchuria (now the Northeast region of China), and
Korea in the north and Annam in the south. The An Lu-shan rebellion. Most
of the Tang accomplishments were attained during the first century of
the dynasty's rule, through the early part of Emperor Hsuan Tsung's long
reign from 712 to 756. However, late in his reign he neglected government
affairs to indulge in his love of art and study. This led to the rise
of viceroys, commanders responsible for military and civil affairs in
the regions. An Lu-shan was a powerful viceroy commanding the northwest
border area. He had both connections at the imperial court and hidden
imperial ambitions. In 755 he rose in rebellion.
The emperor fled the capital with an ill-equipped army. These troops soon
rebelled and forced the emperor to abdicate in favor of his son. The new
emperor raised a new army to fight the rebels. An Lu-shan was assassinated
in 757, but the war dragged on until 763. Afterward, the Chinese Empire
virtually disintegrated once again. The provinces remained under the control
of various regional commanders. The dynasty continued to linger on for
another century, but the Tang Empire never fully recovered the central
authority, prosperity, and peace of its first century.
The most serious problem of the last century of Tang was the rise of great
landlords who were exempt from taxation. Unable to pay the exorbitant
taxes collected twice a year after the An Lu-shan rebellion, peasants
would place themselves under the protection of a landlord or become bandits.
Peasant uprisings, beginning with the revolt under the leadership of Huang
Chao in the 870s, left much of central China in ruins. In 881 Huang Chao's
rebels, now numbering over 600,000 people, destroyed the capital, forcing
the imperial court to move east to Luoyang. Another rebel leader founded
a new dynasty, called Later Liang, at Kaifeng in Henan Province in 907,
but he was unable to unify all China under his rule. This second period
of disunity lasted only half a century. Once again, however, China was
divided between north and south, with five dynasties in the north and
ten kingdoms in the south. Tang culture. Buddhist influence in art, especially
in sculpture, was strong during the Tang period. Fine examples of Buddhist
sculpture are preserved in rock temples, such as those at Yongang and
Longmen in northwest China. The invention of printing and improvements
in papermaking led to the printing of a whole set of Buddhist sutras (discourses
of the Buddha) by 868. By the beginning of the 11th century all of the
Confucian classics and the Taoist canon had been printed. In secular literature,
the Tang is especially well known for poetry. The great Tang poets such
as Li Bai and Du Fu were nearly all disillusioned officials. The Tang
period marked the beginnings of China's early technological advancement
over other civilizations in the fields of shipbuilding and firearms development.
