Main Points

History is Now

With the collapse of the Han dynasty, China became vulnerable to barbarian attack. While the powerful Xiongnu had been driven away leaving only more distant and lesser tribes, the collapse of the Han Dynasty and its mighty armies was news that traveled far. The brief rule of several powerful warlords, a period known as the Three Kingdoms, tried to stem the tide. However, they were more interested in conquering each other than protecting themselves which meant that political fragmentation was just getting started. As in Medieval Europe, this had harsh consequences for Chinese territorial security.

Barbarian Invasions

By the end of the Three Kingdoms in 280 AD, the barbarians were through knocking at the gates, and stormed the borders to carve up China for themselves. The period is known as the Age of Division, with barbarians ruling the North while the Chinese continued to fight from the South - though not together of course. However, Northern China saw a succession of barbarian rulers. Each would conquer large sections of territory, adopt Chinese customs, and finally succumb to newer and more powerful barbarians. The most powerful state was Toba Wei, established in 386 AD. It survived until 534 AD, contemporary with some of the most brutal barbarians, the confederation of Juan Juan tribes which ruled large areas of North China. Not until an alliance was formed between Turkish tribes and the Chinese were the Juan Juan crushed in 551 AD. The Turks then seized control of their own kingdoms in North China and became the greatest foe of the Chinese for the next few decades. Although these invaders were ultimately repelled or absorbed culturally, the downfall of China as a territorially unified state devastated Chinese pride. The cultural implications were profound.

However, Europeans would have even more reason to curse this period in Chinese history. Like the Xiongnu before them, when the Juan Juan fled from China, they swept more barbarians west across Eurasia. Thus the Germanic successor states who had carved up the Roman Empire were inundated with a whole new round of barbarian invaders. These waves were crowned by the emergence of the Juan Juan themselves into Europe. Known as the Avars, they conquered and ruled a brutal Khanate in the middle of central Europe, and raided throughout the continent for two centuries until they were destroyed by Charlemagne.

Rise of Religion

Taoist mysticism was the oldest cultural tradition in China and had not vanished by any means, but its airy esotericism was food for philosophers over wine, not barbarian-displaced refugees. During the Han Dynasty, the power and morality of Confucian philosophy had surpassed Taoism and become the dominant cultural philosophy, especially among the learned and the elite. Now, however, the logical and moral guidelines of Confucianism rang coldly against Chinese insecurities; nor did it address the spiritual needs of a people questioning their place in the universe. The answer to this soul searching came in the emergence of Buddhism as a national religion.

Buddhism was known in China during the Han Dynasty. It had filtered out of India onto the Silk Road and been adopted by many of the barbarian tribes as well as many Chinese. Its role in Chinese society as a whole however was limited. In some ways, Buddhism benefited directly from the invasions because the barbarians who conquered North China frequently brought it into power with them. However, South China which fundamentally remained in Chinese hands experienced the same Buddhist explosion, and this was exclusively due to Buddhism's ability to speak an emotional language that the Chinese needed now more than ever.

The result was an odd amalgamation. Buddhism answered deep needs in Chinese psychology at this moment but it was completely alien. So large amounts of the dominant Confucian ideologies infiltrated Chinese Buddhism; Confucianism itself even survived among many elites especially the learned, scholars, and the university and bureaucracies. Taoist mysticism also merged quite nicely with Buddhist metaphors, resulting in a fusion of the three great cultural traditions of China in a way no Taoist, Confucian, or Buddhist would ever have imagined just a few centuries before.

China saw a healthy, tolerant growth of not only religion but religious sects that proliferated freely. This was partly the result of the Buddhist and the Confucian stress upon peace, harmony, and justice. Yet tolerance was in no way a mark of shallowness. The strong Buddhist roots that flourish in China (and other countries) to this day, were firmly set down at this point in Chinese history. And China would become the adopted homeland that allowed Buddhism to spread throughout the region.

The most important part about Chinese religion in the Medieval Era is that it coexisted so neatly with learning and education. Like Muhammad's injunction to expand knowledge, Kung Fu Tzu prized intelligence and education. His teachings were a critical part of the new religion which emerged; study was intimately tied to moral conduct. This is unquestionably a similarity and key reason why the Tang Dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate were the two most powerful and successful states of the Medieval Era.

Economic Growth

The growth of religion during the Medieval Era allowed states to consolidate their power and grow stronger. While this was not appreciated by a people mourning the greatness of their past, this period of Chinese history was a critical formative period for important cultural and religious institutions. When China was reunified under the Sui Dynasty in 589 AD, this was the foundation upon which China was able to build the world's most advanced civilization. The Sui emperors (both of them) launched many national infrastructure projects which helped to realize Chinese reunification and grow the long-term economy. The most important of these projects was the Grand Canal which for the first time physically linked North and South China. These projects were deeply unpopular at the time due to the intense labor conscription, high death rate among workers, and high taxes they involved. This led to the downfall of the Sui Dynasty in 618 AD, but just a few years later in 624 AD, China was reunified by Li Yuan, Duke of Tang. The Tang Dynasty would be the second great dynasty to rule China and pushed her borders into the Middle East.

The Grand Canal, despite its divisive beginnings, would serve as an impressive statement of Chinese power for centuries, even to the present day. Its beauty was legendary, and its economic and political importance impossible to overstate to the nation. It physically unified China, and became the vital highway pouring trade and tourism between north and south. While the Great Wall has become an exotic symbol that Chinese and foreigners admire as a wonder of the world, the Grand Canal was the wonder of the world that ran through their own backyards nearly 500 years earlier.

The Tang emperors encouraged trade and built their capital Xian, into the most magnificent city in the world by nurturing the most cosmopolitan culture and the most vibrant monetary economy of the Medieval Era. An economy so successful, that when its political power faltered, it fell prey to its own wealthy aristocrats. But in terms of social development, China's economic sophistication explains why unique among the civilizations of the world, China emerged into the Renaissance before 1000 AD. The survival of South China during the Age of Division gave Chinese civilization a base from which to survive, incubate, and then expand under the Tang Dynasty as far as the Middle East. Where Arabs and Germans had to raise empires on lessons learned from the great Ancient Era powers, Chinese civilization Was one of the great Ancient Era powers. This head start and sophistication clearly showed.

Perhaps of equal importance, Chinese success was deeply rooted in Buddhism; few religions coexisted as neatly with learning and education. Like Muhammad's invocation to explore knowledge, Kung Fu Tzu prized intelligence and education. These principles would be absorbed into Chinese religion to the extent that China instituted the first national examination system in world history, scores were used to determine entrance to the university system and for government jobs as well. Education consisted of studying the Chinese classics of literature, wisdom, and moral conduct. The examination system was not a panacea, though popular literature of "noble peasants" scoring high government posts by virtue and good test scores was a popular theme. However, those with wealth could afford to hire teachers and tutors for their sons while the very poor could not even grant their boys much time to study; they were needed to help with farm labor. Nevertheless, the examination system was used to build a government meritocracy in which performance and excellence counted for more than any of the factors used by other civilizations (birth, family connections, race, religion, etc.) It was the most sophisticated and advanced government of Medieval Era and is one of the most important reasons directly responsible for the success of the Tang Emperors.

Tang armies also expanded China's borders throughout the North and South and then broke out along the Silk Road. Chinese armies would march across the Middle East until 751 AD when their furthest penetration yet encountered an army of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Battle of the Talas River is thus one of the most defining battles of the Medieval Era; Arab victory ensured their dominance throughout the Middle East and marked the peak of Tang Chinese expansion.

However, this is not the reason that the Tang Dynasty is still cherished by modern Chinese. In England and the United States today, school children study Shakespeare whose writings 500 years earlier are still considered mandatory reading for a complete education. Chinese children also read the literature of their ancestors; it's just a little older. 1300 years ago, Du Fu (712 - 770 AD) became almost instantly the most important poet in Chinese history, closely followed by Li Bai (701 - 762 AD) and Wang Wei (701 - 761 AD). Equivalent to the explosion of poets in Elizabethan London (or Augustan Rome which produced Vergil, Horace, Catullus, and a legion of other Roman poets), Xian during the Tang Dynasty hosted the greatest poets in Chinese history, poetic verses that are still on the lips of China's school children today.

All good things come to an end however. In 755 AD, the An Lushan rebellion, toppled the Tang Dynasty which fled south. Although the Tang emperors would eventually return, this storied flight colored perceptions of the Tang Dynasty ever after. Like the Emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty, later Tang Emperors only exercised as much power as they could convince local warlords and wealthy aristocrats to give them.

Another key weakness had been growing for a long time. China still remained fundamentally dynamic, but life for common citizens had become harder under the Tang as wealthy landowners increased their holdings forcing small independent farmers to become poorly paid farm laborers and this trend worsened significantly after 755 AD. When the Tang fell in 907 AD only 50 years of political collapse followed. In 960 AD, Zhao Kuangyin reunified China and established the Song Dynasty. He reigned in Chinese expansionism and defined China as a nation. The Song boasted an economy so dynamic that it developed the world's first paper currency to prevent economic stagnation for want of hard currency. And it saw the urbanization and rise of the middle class which would also characterize the Renaissance in later European history.

World history would have been a truly interesting thing to witness if the Song emperors had been able to fulfill their potential. However, in 1204 AD, the Mongol armies stormed out of Central Asia. The devastation they wrought on the Middle East was like something out of horror films, and despite China's successes - it was the only empire to go toe to toe with the Mongol hordes - after decades of onslaught the Mongols finally conquered and enslaved China. Kubalai Khan destroyed the last Song emperor in 1279 AD, and for the next 89 years, China reentered the Medieval Era during the Yuan Dynasty (and that may be too optimistic). Only with the expulsion of the Mongols in 1368 AD, did the Chinese Ming Dynasty begin to repair the damage. In 1402 AD, Emperor Ming Yong Le ascended the throne and established the policies which returned China permanently to the Renaissance Era.