Song Dynasty and the Development of China Nation

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Neo Confucianism in the Song Dynasty
Growth of the commercial economy in the Song dynasty
Society
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The Song Dynasty was an ancient Chinese empire famed for making much political and economic advancement that has been carried over to the modern-day. The Song Dynasty was split into two separate regions of the Northern Song and Southern Song. This Dynasty controlled almost sixty percent of China’s population. The empire had the most dynamic agricultural land that the Song used to empower the people of China. The Southern Song region had a large naval military in order to protect their region and waters from outside invasion. The empire had very advanced technology more than any other regime in China had managed to achieve. The Song Dynasty fell in 1279 and China became one nation under the Yuan Dynasty. (Benn, 236)

Neo Confucianism in the Song Dynasty

Neo Confucianism was established in China during the Song Dynasty. This religion was founded on Confucian beliefs during the period of the Qing Dynasty. The religion brought together fundamental concepts of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. The Confucians incorporated Buddhist ideas in their faith on the nature of the human spirit. The Neo-Confucians explored the relationship of human beings to the universe something that the Confucians had not practiced before. The major advocate of Neo-Confucianism was Zhu Xi, a creative writer who believed that human beings should sponsor social unity and good personal behavior. Neo-Confucians believed in the importance of maintaining high ethical values. They believed that for this to happen individuals were supposed to pursue both academic and philosophical practices in order to achieve the required standards. (Tu1, 190)

Neo Confucians believed that heaven was a holy and wonderful place, which was enclosed. They argued that even though human beings were born well, they were not pure and therefore measures were supposed to be put in place to purify them. This in other words meant that people’s heaven required purification. Unlike Buddhists and Taoists, Neo-Confucians felt that there was no outer world that was separate from the world we live in. They, therefore, condemned the concept of rebirth and the related concept of destiny. They argued that heaven was in the world and that it existed inside the heart of a person. They, therefore, argued that meditation was important for one to be in touch with the inner being. They said that human beings were born with the knowledge of what was good and what was bad. In this way, they felt that one did not have to be taught or learn to know the difference. (Tu2, 198)

Growth of the commercial economy in the Song dynasty

The Song Dynasty experienced remarkable commercial expansion, financial growth, advanced trade as well as development in agriculture. Agriculture expanded in the Song Dynasty where large tracts of land were ploughed. The government advised the people to open new lands for farming. The government in a gesture of gratitude offered the land to the people permanently. Irrigation schemes were developed and new farming tools, seeds and fertilizers were developed. These produced many crops for the people that they sold within and outside China. It was during the Song dynasty that trade with outside communities began to expand. Merchants would take their goods overseas for trade. These merchants went as far as East Africa in their trade. The Song government supported the merchants by establishing Trade Supervisors. In this way, the merchants were able to increase their profits. (Global openness)

The Song Dynasty began the world’s first paper money that took place on a large scale. The paper industry employed many people thus improving their economic status. The development of paper money also led to an increase in foreign markets thus boosting the level of commerce. The textile industries came up further advancing the rate of porcelain making in the Song Dynasty. Commerce boomed in the region with many industries coming up because of the impacts the money brought to the region. With the development of paper money, inventions of new printing techniques were established thus leading to a high level of civilization and technology. The use of the abacus became a common calculating device, which came to be adopted by many scientists. (Veeck, etal, 368)

After the massive paper money invention, there was a large scale of steel and the iron industries in the Song Dynasty. They initially used charcoal in the production process, which led to great deforestation in the northern part of China. Later on, bituminous coke was discovered to do similar work thus saving the forests from the steel industries. Iron and steel allowed things like hammers, hammers, pins, and Buddhist statues to be produced. Salt and copper were also made from iron and they were used for trade with other communities. Mining also came to be done in China where sulfur was extracted and used in making gunpowder. Weapons were advanced for the military from the creation of gunpowder that was used in the war. Manufacturing industries for these weapons came up and thousands of people got employment. The Song Dynasty witnessed massive growth in towns and cities. Many people carried out various economic activities in the urban areas than had happened in the earlier regimes. (Wagner, 178)

Society

The Song Dynasty also had many accomplishments in literature. Poetry and prose were some forms of literature that prospered during the Song Dynasty. The main poetry styles that they used included Shi poetry Ci poetry. Ci poetry is composed of long verses, which could contain five to seven syllables. Shi poetry was much shorter with about four to eight lines that are about two stanzas. The Ci was the most common fictional and imaginative material being common in the poems. Ci poetry became popular displaying feelings of love, calmness and meditation. The growth of urban centers and population increase in the Song Dynasty led to the establishment of printed materials and oral fiction. People in cities spent money on novels as well as finding time to listen to oral fiction. The Chinese in Song Dynasty wrote and told theories of strange happenings. Ghost stories, amusement novels, and other entertainment materials became very popular. (Shen, 102)

The other major achievement in the Song Dynasty society was their art. Court painting and literati painting that incorporated beautiful landscapes were very popular. Court painting portrayed an element of the upper class while literati’s painting was more about human personality. In Song Dynasty, painters stressed the value of individual spirituality. Imaginary painting of sharp characters like birds, flowers, and landscapes was very popular. Painters emphasized mobile imaginary images and many people admired such details. Real and original imaginary paintings were well structured to capture the moments bringing out real images. Paintings would be made with bronze and ceramics capturing realistic landscapes. They painted many different things with detail being portrayed in the painting. (Gascoigne, 105)

Conclusion

The Song Dynasty contributed a lot to making China a productive and developed nation. There was tremendous growth in many sectors during the Song era that formed the foundation for today’s China. The population growth during the Song dynasty doubled from what it was in the Qing dynasty. The empire is well known for being the first to create paper money in the world. The dynasty was also able to establish a strong naval base to protect their region and waters from invasion. During this dynasty, all the sectors made advanced growth and had the Chinese nation become very powerful. Their tremendous efforts and structures created a good environment for growth to be felt in every region.

Works Cited

Benn, Charles. China’s Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. 234-314. Print.

Gascoigne, Bamber.The Dynasties of China: A History, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003. 100-110. Print.

Global openness. Emperor Huizong Song Dynasty. Web.

Shen, Fuwei. Cultural flow between China and the outside world, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1996. 98-102. Print.

Tu Weiming. Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. New York: State University of New York Press, 1985. 178-202. Print.

Tu Weiming. Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472-1509). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. 189-222. Print.

Veeck, Gregory; Pannell, Clifton W.; Smith, Christopher J.; Huang, Youqin.China’s Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic, and Social Change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2007. 361-381. Print.

Wagner, Donald B. “The Administration of the Iron Industry in Eleventh-Century China”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44(2001): 175–197.

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