Developments in East Asia

• Government Developments in the Song Dynasty
  • Imperial Bureaucracy
  • Qin Dynasty (221 BCE - 207 BCE)
  • Continuity across centuries and dynasties
  • Expanded under the Song
  • Meritocracy and the Civil Services Exam
  • Emperor Song Taizu
  • Expanded educational opportunities to the lower class
  • Based on Confucian texts
  • Upward mobility
  • Good pay used up surplus of wealth
• Economic Developments in Postclassical China
  • Gunpowder
  • Innovators during the Song Dynasty were the first to make guns
  • Agricultural Productivity
  • Champa rice
    • Quick maturing rice that can allow two harvests in one growing season
  • Manure
  • Water wheels, pumps, and terraces
  • Manufacturing and Trade
  • Coal
    • Also known as “black earth”
  • Steel
    • Bridges, gates, ship anchors, and agriculture
  • Proto-industrialization
  • Taxes
    • Workers paid for labor, leading to increased circulation of money
  • Tributes
  • Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia were tributary states
  • Stimulated trade
• Social Structures in China
  • Filial Piety
  • Respect and care of parents and elders
  • Scholar Gentry
  • New class created by bureaucratic expansion
  • Outnumbered the aristocracy
  • Educated in Confucian philosophy
  • Role of Women
  • Respected, but expected to defer to men
  • Foot binding among aristocratic families
• Intellectual and Cultural Developments
  • Paper and printing
  • Woodblock printing
  • Reading and poetry
  • Studied and produced by Confucian scholars
• Religious Diversity in China
  • Buddhism
  • Theravada
    • Personal spiritual growth
    • Meditation
    • Self-discipline
    • Southeast Asia
  • Mahayana
    • Spiritual growth and service
    • China and Korea
  • Tibetan
    • Chanting
    • Tibet
  • Neo-Confucianism
  • Combined rational though with the abstract ideas of Daoism and Buddhism
  • Emphasized ethics
  • Popular in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam

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