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