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
\