The Song dynasty followed the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and was founded by Zhao Kuangyin when he united central and southern China. It consisted of two eras: the first lasted from its foundation in 960 to 1127, when its capital Kaifeng (in modern-day Henan Province) fell to the Jin regime; and the second lasted from 1127, when the Song was restored in Yingtian (in modern-day southwestern Shangqiu city, Henan Province), to 1279, when it met its final demise at the hands of the Yuan regime. Since the second government later moved its capital south to Lin’an (modern-day Hangzhou city, Zhejiang Province), the two eras have been respectively known in history as Northern Song and Southern Song.
Rise and Fall
Agriculture
Thanks to population growth, agriculture enjoyed unprecedented development on all fronts: more tilled land, better iron tools, new farming techniques, higher yields, a bigger variety of cash crops, and diversified development. Compared with the Han and Tang dynasties, the Northern Song had a smaller territory but a larger population (whose growth and density were also higher). This critical advantage helped Song surpass these two predecessors in agriculture by a large margin. Although the Southern Song initially suffered devastating wars in the southeast, its agriculture soon recovered and enjoyed rapid growth, as legions of northern migrants joined the hard work of southern locals. Chinese peasants became more focused on intensive cultivation and started growing a larger variety of crops. During the reign of Emperor Zhenzong, Champa rice (a high-yield strain introduced from Vietnam) was spread to a large area in central, eastern, and southeastern China, including modern-day Hubei, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui. A greater variety of cash crops came to be grown, especially in the south. Apart from tea which came to be grown all over, sugarcane plantations mushroomed in modern-day Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Fujian. Cotton fields also kept growing in both acreage and yield, although silk and linen remained the primary materials for textiles.
Science, Technology, and Culture
Science and Technology
The science and technology of ancient China reached a zenith during Song dynasty. Besides landmark breakthroughs in the application of three world-famous inventions—the compass, printing, and gunpowder—Chinese scientists also achieved unprecedented progress in many other fields and made their country a world leader in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, agronomy, and architecture. According to documents dating from the late Northern Song dynasty, compasses had already been used in voyages. In the Southern Song dynasty, most sea-going vessels were equipped with such navigational devices—an unprecedented progress. Woodblock printing, which had been used since the Tang dynasty, continued to enjoy substantial development during the Northern Song dynasty. More notably, movable type printing was invented by Bi Sheng during the reign of Emperor Renzong. A cluster of printing centers emerged, including Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Xichuan, and Fujian in Northern Song, and Lin’an in Southern Song. State-run ordnance factories started using gunpowder to make firearms. During the reign of Emperor Shenzong, his front forces were already armed with gunpowder-propelled arrows. Astronomers of the Northern Song conducted several systematic observations on stars: in 1006, they documented the appearance of a “guest star,” the world’s earliest record of a supernova. During the reign of Emperor Zhezhong, a group of scientists led by Su Song and Han Gonglian built a water-driven astronomical clock tower. Chinese calendars also underwent several rounds of substantial improvement during Song: for example, the Unified Celestial Calendar (1199) calculated the length of a year as 365.2425 days, exactly the same as in the current Gregorian calendar, published 383 years later. Outstanding achievements were also recorded made in medical science. In 1082, Tang Shenwei completed the Classified Materia Medica from Historical Classics for Emergencies, which included twice as many herbs as the Herbal Classic of Tang. Other medical masterpieces included China’s first official handbook of prescriptions, the Formulas of the Pharmaceutical Bureau finalized during the reign of Emperor Huizong; the three-volume Illustrated Manual of Acupuncture Points by Wang Weiyi, a landmark work in Chinese acupuncture; the Key to the Rapeutics of Children’s Diseases by Qian Yi of Northern Song, which perfectly combined theories with experience; and the world’s earliest work on forensic science—the fifteen-volume Manual of Forensic Medicine by Song Ci of the Southern Song. Notable progress was also made in the Imperial Medical Academy, which introduced obstetrics and ophthalmology as separate branches. In agronomy, Chen Fu finished a comprehensive masterpiece—the Agricultural Treatise—in the early Southern Song dynasty. Other famous works included Chen Zhu’s Manual of Phoenix Trees completed in 1049, Cai Xiang’s Manual of Litchi in 1059, and Han Yan’s Manual of Oranges in 1178, which were all among the earliest known works on specific cash crops. The most notable progress in architecture during this dynasty was the innovative method for building brick pagodas, pioneered by Yu Hao in his exemplary work in Kaifeng in 1041. Since then, this method had been widely used in the north. The eighty-four meter high Kaiyuan Monastery Pagoda (also known as the Lookout Tower against Enemy Troops) in Dingzhou city, Hebei Province, was built in 1055 and remains the tallest brick pagoda still standing in China today.
Historical Role
The Song empire was not only one of the largest countries in the world, but also a global leader in economics and culture. Its achievements in many fields contributed to the development of human civilization. Among China’s Four Great Inventions, for example, three (including printing, gunpowder, and the compass) underwent major phases of development and application during this dynasty. The Song empire issued the earliest paper currency in the world, and played a leading role in global maritime trade, mostly importing raw materials and exporting end products (handicraft goods). Its rapid economic growth, especially in such sectors as agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce, ushered in another golden age for the Chinese economy after the Warring States Period, Qin dynasty, and Han dynasty. Meanwhile, China’s economic center successfully switched to the south, as the fertile plains in the lower-Yangtze River Valley and the Taihu Lake Basin grew into the most developed region in the world. In literature, although Tang and Song dynasties boasted equally-important achievements respectively in shi poetry and ci poetry (which are hardly comparable genres due to their totally different orientation and conception), the Song’s all-around development in many other literary forms made it all the more brilliant than the Tang. It also surpassed the Tang in many other fields such as science, technology, philosophy, education, and historiography, bringing the civilization of feudal China to its zenith. That said, the Song empire was the smallest among the regimes to rule central China, disadvantaged it when confronting the northern Liao regime. Later, it lost half of its territory to an emerging power, the Jin, and eventually met its end at the hands of the Yuan.