The reforms also had major flaws: Their implementation was extremely complicated, which opened the door for rampant corruption and general waste and inefficiency. When the emperor who sponsored his reforms died, he was left totally without support and protection. What the reforms had achieved in 16 years of unremitting effort was wiped out in a single year. The great reformer died the next year in despair and anguish. And the Song regime never did solve its chronic problems of an impoverished government and a weak military.
The nomads of the State of Jin invaded the Song, and captured and looted its capital Kaifeng (1127). When they returned to their grasslands a year later, they took in tow the Song emperor and his queen, concubines, sons, and ministers. One of the emperor’s sons managed to escape and become the next emperor. He relocated the Song capital to Hangzhou, south of the Yangtze River, far away from the reach of the Jin cavalry. This relocation of the Song capital marks the divide between Northern Song and Southern Song.
Southern Song thrived despite its greatly reduced size, for the relocation of the Song capital was followed by an exodus of panicking Han Chinese people from the North to the South. Population, capital, and know‐how flowed from the more developed North to the less developed South. Hangzhou replaced Kaifeng as the nation’s political, economic, and cultural center. It became the world’s largest city with a huge concentration of wealth and population (1.24 million). To match their wealth, cultural sophistication, and natural beauty, Hangzhou and Suzhou were known as “Heaven on Earth.” The shift of China’s economic center from the North to the South, begun during the post‐Han Period of Disunity and furthered during the Tang Dynasty, was now complete.
Chinese philosophical thinking experienced a second blossoming during the Song Dynasty. Out of it came Neo‐Confucianism represented by Zhu Xi (1130–1200). He kept the Confucian core of benevolence, hierarchy, and reciprocity, removed Dong Zhongshu’s supernatural rantings, and added elements of Indian Buddhist metaphysics. His landmark contribution was to give classical Confucianism an elaborate systemic structure with rigid detail.
Zhu Xi.
Source: CHU HSI (1130–1200). Chinese philosopher. Paper album leaf by unknown artist.
Zhu’s social structure is made up of four classes under the emperor: scholar‐officials, peasants, artisans, and merchants in descending order. A person’s station in life, however, is mobile: One can move up the social hierarchy, with the imperial examination system providing the major channel for social mobility. He relegates women to the confines of the domestic sphere: to bear and rear children and do the household chores, totally subordinate and inferior to men. Divorce and remarriage become taboo. The cruel practice of foot‐binding spreads from the upper classes to the lower classes, becoming a nationwide scourge. He requires children to obey their elders in every way. Specific and detailed rules are laid out on how a child should behave with regard to dress, speech, conduct, reading, writing, and food and drink. To act strictly in accordance to one’s station in life is made a moral imperative.
The purpose of foot‐binding was to keep a girl’s feet small. The practice began with upper‐class families, and spread throughout all classes of society. It lasted for a thousand years, from the Song Dynasty to the Republic of China. When it was banned in the early twentieth century, an estimated 100% of upper‐class Han Chinese females and 50% of all Han Chinese females had bound feet.
A girl with natural feet was commonly considered unacceptable as a wife or daughter‐in‐law. Therefore, parents felt obliged to put their pre‐puberty daughters through this inhumane torture. They usually hired a foot‐binding practitioner who would break the girl’s toes and arches, tuck the broken toes under the broken arches, and wrap the broken foot in layers of cotton bandages. The bandages would stay on for years, preventing the foot from growing normally. The procedure caused extreme pain and left the girl handicapped for life.
An aesthetic explanation for this cruel practice was that walking on delicate little feet enhanced a girl’s beauty and sexual appeal. A practical explanation was that it physically prevented a female from leaving the house and neglecting her domestic duties.
The nomadic Mongol and Manchu conquerors of China did not have this tradition. The Manchu Qing Empress Dowager Cixi tried to ban it without success. The Republic of China officially banned it with limited success. The Communist regime finally banned it entirely after 1949.
Zhu’s rigid social structure is unnatural and inhumane. To defend his grotesque system, he screams out, “Promote Heaven’s principles; wipe out human desire.” His interpretation of Confucian classics would be adopted as standard answers in imperial examinations. Neo‐Confucianism would be official orthodoxy for the remainder of imperial China.
Science and technology reached new heights in Song China. Substantive improvements were made to China’s “Four Great Inventions”: the compass, gunpowder, paper making, and movable‐type printing. These inventions were used for spreading information, navigating oceangoing ships, and conducting warfare. They had a far‐reaching impact on the advance of Chinese civilization, and their introduction into Europe accelerated the West’s entry into the Modern Age.
Emperors throughout the Song Dynasty stuck to the principle of keeping the military weak that was laid down by its founding emperor. While this policy indeed reduced the threat to the throne from the military, it left China vulnerable to the military threats from the non‐Han nomadic states on its borders. The emperors of late Song adopted a strategy of forming alliances with one nomadic state to fend off another, or a strategy of “appeasement” (i.e., giving precious gifts of silver, silk, tea, and copper cash in the hope of pacifying the aggressors). These strategies worked in the short run, but did nothing to make up for Song’s military deficiency. When the unstoppable Mongol cavalry came galloping out of the steppes, the Song Dynasty fell and the Mongol Yuan Dynasty began its century‐long rule over China.
The Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368): China under Mongol Rule
For close to four out of the next six centuries, Han Chinese would be under non‐Han rule: The Yuan Dynasty was Mongol, the Qing Dynasty was Manchu, and only the Ming Dynasty that came between was Han Chinese. Historically China’s troubles with non‐Han neighbors go back to at least 770 BCE, when the Zhou Dynasty moved its capital east to Luoyang, away from invading barbarians. The Han Dynasty also suffered the same humiliation, also relocating its capital eastward away from marauders. The Han Dynasty collapsed in large measure because it failed to deal with the northern frontier, and for the next 350 years China experienced invasions from the north. The reunification of the country by the Sui and Tang Dynasties required a strong military, but renegade generals became a domestic problem. To rein in the military meant sacrificing some of the nation’s ability to keep the northern frontier peoples in check. Accordingly, when the Song Dynasty came to power it never took control of the numerous frontier tribes. Eventually the Song retreated south and one of those tribes, the Mongols, swept the Song away.
The “Four Great Inventions”
1 The compass. Chinese had known that iron magnets had the quality of pointing the north‐south orientation as far back as the Warring States period (476–221 BCE). They made magnetized iron spoons and needles to use as compasses. The Song troops used compasses to determine direction at night and in heavy fog. Later, oceangoing ships adopted it. Arab merchants who often traveled on Chinese ships introduced it to Europe, thereby helping Europeans in their global exploration.
2 Gunpowder. Ancient Daoist alchemists, in their pursuit of a drug that would bring eternal life, had discovered that applying heat to a mixture of nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal would produce an explosion. The mixture was soon widely used to make fireworks. By late Tang, however,