Imagine you lived in the greatest city in the world. Its streets are bustling with merchants who buy and sell goods from every known country, and many more that lie beyond the limits of knowledge. Such was Chang’an, (now Xi’an) capital and chief entrepot of China’s Tang dynasty (618-903 CE)[1][ With nearly a million residents and over 100 ethnic communities, it was more Babel than Beijing. Zoroastrian fire temples stood beside Buddhist pagodas and Nestorian churches; street food fused Middle Eastern spices with Chinese noodles. Foreign diplomats rubbed shoulders with camel-driving traders from Samarkand. The city was so tolerant and worldly that speaking Turkic or Persian on the street raised no eyebrows. Poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu flourished , as did artists such as Han Gan and Zhang Yuan. There were far reaching technological advances such as wood block printing and all presided over by relatively benign Emperors backed by a professional and highly educated Civil Service.
We’ve picked the Tang because it illustrates the essential doctrines of the great Professor RH Davis who knew that it was trade that made cities, and cities which make humans civilised. He was writing about Europe. Yet Chang’an under the Tang was one example of what humans can achieve when they try. No wonder the modern Chinese feel they need take no lessons from westerners in how to run a civilisation. The Silk Road was essentially a Chinese invention. It was, and maybe still is, the greatest trading system in the world.
It all ended in tears of course, as did many of the other examples we shall consider in this series. The Lushan rebellion of 755-763 inflicted economic and human wounds so deep that the dynasty never fully recovered. And obviously there have been many advances in technical knowledge and in things like medicine, since the Tang fell. But if you wanted to give an example of when the ordinary Joe, people like you and me, could step from their house and feel a glad confident good morning, Tang China is a very good place to start.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty
[2] RHC Davis: A History of Medieval Europe from Constantine to St Louis 2nd edition Longman 1988
#china #Tang dynasty #trade #silk road #civil service #history
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