handles over 70 million tones a year. It’s an amazing scene. It goes on all though the day, does it ? Yes, 24 hours a day. 24hours a day！ Yeah. It took five million men to build the first section 605, eventually running north to a small place called Beijing. And it was built 1000 years before the Industrial Revolution in Europe. On the up was number three, and in the middle is number two and behind is number one. Mainly carrying heavy materials. Coal. Coal. And building materials. Building materials. China is building everywhere. Fantastic. just as today, such projects were only possible with a command economy. And with it, the Tang transformed China. In the seventh century the economy boomed. The canal shipped 165000 tones of grain each year just to feed the new garrisons in the south. And standing at the intersection of China‘s waterways, Yangzhou became a new kind of city. It‘s the first sign of the beginning of the modern. The city never slept. It is probably the first large city in history to employ artificial lighting on a grand scale. Even the barge traffic on the Grand Canal was able to keep moving though the city until well after midnight. So Tang Dynasty Yangzhou was always open for business. And so to , of course, was the entertainment industry, the taverns and music bars and the brothels. described with delicate euphemisms in Tang Dynasty poetry as Yangzhou‘s ―ten miles of summer breeze.‖ In the 830s, it was all immortalized by the poet Du Mo in a tag which has hung around the city., for all its ups and downs, from that day to this. ―the Yangzhou dream.‖ And as the south grew rich, they looked for new outlets for international trade, not only by land but by sea, all the way to the Persian Gulf. So here in Tang Dynasty. We‘ve got the beginnings of what I suppose, we could call the maritime Silk Road. Long-distance international trade organized by merchants here in cities like Quanzhou. And they‘re selling very top-end stuff-silks and fine clothes and exotic tableware. They are selling mass-produced ceramics designed with the western consumer in mind, and they are also selling what will become the most popular drink in the world-tea. Tea had begun in the south on the subtropical hillsides of Yunnan. Originally drunk for health, by the Tang its use spread everywhere and the first books had been published on its beneficial effects. It‘s never looked back. They exported silk, too. Coveted since Roman times by Westerners who were prepared to pay jaw-dropping prices for garments fit for an emperor. Here is a dragon, it‘s a dragon. so you might think China‘s role today as a global mass producer is a new
phenomenon in world history. But it‘s not. It has been estimated that Tang China had
55% of the world‘s GDP with its vast market, from local village craftsmen and women to the Imperial factories, and from everyday ceramics to gorgeous works of art. Tang China was a giant engine of growth. So let‘s view the early medieval world in a different way. Tang China was the superpower. They exported Confucian ideas, Buddhist religion, their written script and their language , adopted across East Asia and Japan. The Japanese even imitated Tang Xi‘an in the architecture of their capital, Nara.
China‘s influence on the East was as profound as Rome in the Latin West. In the East, in the seventh century, all roads led to Xi‘an. And if you want a symbol of the age, just outside Xi‘an stand the statues of 108 ambassadors from Central Asia to Japan and Vietnam to Persia.The diplomatic pecking order of the Tang foreign office.
This was the time, when China went out to the world and the world came here to China. And Islam also came to China in the Tang. Peacefully, which was not always the case in history.
“We believe during the Prophet Muhammad.s time, peace be upon him, encouraged our ancestors to find technology developed in China.‖
―Seek knowledge as far as China.‖ It had been the year Xuanzang arrived in India that the Prophet had died in Arabia, telling his followers to seek knowledge as far as China.
“Today we speak Chinese Mandarin and local dialect, but in history we used to speak Chinese, Arabic, Farsi and Mongolian. Four languages ,some time. ―
“At this time, Tang Dynasty China was the center of the world. Xi‘an was the center of the world, I suppose. ―
“The superpower. ―
To welcome an alien religion would hardly have been possible in the West or Islamic world before modern times. It shows that while the Chinese believed in the superiority of their civilization, they also knew there were many paths to enlightenment. All knowledge was useful in understanding the cosmos and the
position of humanity in it. And that idea is expressed in one of the most astonishing monuments in the whole of Chinese history. It‘s a stone inscription recording the coming of Christianity to China as far back as the 630s.
This is one of China great national treasures, one of the select list of the A-list monuments that can never leave the country. And as an account of the interaction of civilization. It‘s really hard to beat. Let‘s start at the top. Those nine characters say ―a monument commemorating the propagation of the luminous religion of the West‖. That is Christianity.
In 635, it says, a wise man from the West, perhaps from Persia, called Raban, decided to bring the Christian scriptures to China. Observing the path of the winds, through great perils. He made his way all the way to China ,mably on the Silk Route and arrived here in Chang ?an. The Emperor, it says, received him here in Chang‘an and the Christian scriptures were translated in the Imperial Library. And then the Emperor considered them in his private apartments and was deeply convinced by their truthfulness. And issued this proclamation in 638.‖The way for humanity, at different times different places did not have the same name. And the great sage, at different times and different places was not the same human body. Over history, heaven ordained that true religion would be established in different countries and different climates, so that all of humanity could be saved. And we‘ve considered the Christian scriptures and have decided that, in all their essentials. They are about the core values of humanity and we have decreed that they be propagated throughout the Empire‖ But the story of China is one of cycles of creation and destruction. And in the next century the Empire faced a perfect storm of crises.
It began out in the West. Battles against the expanding Muslim caliphatesavage internal rebellions reported by one of the great Tang poets, Li Bai.
“Last year, we were fighting out to the north beyond the Great Wall, and this year we‘re fighting far out in the west on the Kashgar River. We‘re washed our blades in the streams of Parthia and grazed our horses amid the snows of Tian Shan‖ says Li Bai.
There it is. There‘s Tian Shan. What a place to imagine it, here in Jiaohe, Tang Dynasty-garrisoned town with its watch tower and beacon platform.
“But the beacon fires are always burning, the marching and the fighting never stops and nor does the dying. You should know that the sword is a cursed thing that the wise man uses only if he must.‖
Out in these vast expanses the Tang Empire was overstretched. And in the end they abandoned the west. China would only regain it in the 18th century.
The crisis came under the Emperor Xuanzong, the apocalyptic eight-year rebellion of General An Lushan, which saw the end of Tang dream of a greater China.
The oasis of Turfan was one of the Tang garrison towns out in the western deserts.
―So Li Bai writes his poem about fighting in the west, it‘s this area he‘s talking about.‖
“ In about 755, because of the rebellion of An Lushan and Shi Siming, the center government became much weaker, so the stationed troops were returned to inland China to fight against the army of An Lushan and Shi Siming. ―
“So this was a very big shock. ― “Yeah, a big war lord. ―
An Lushan, a bogeyman who chilled hearts back in Xi‘an. Far to the northeast he gathered armies to take revenge after the Emperor had killed his son.
At home, the Dynasty had lost touch with the people. The tombs of the eighth-century royals near Xi‘an show their pastimes and pleasures, polo and hunting and courtly parties oblivious to the gathering storm.
These are wonderful images outside the tomb chamber. They‘re courtly ladies, just attendants. In their stylish they could be fin de siècle, Paris, couldn‘t they? Central Asian fashions.
These are the vogue in the early 700s. The faces are so animated. You can almost imagine their conversations, the gossip, the rumours. Courts that were seething with anxiety.
“I‘m afraid we Chinese never manage to live more than 50 years without some terrible cataclysmic event‖
“the cycles of Chinese history. ―
“----That right. And it had been a particularly good period up until the Emperor—the brilliant Emperor began, allegedly, to love his concubine, Yang Guifei, the precious concubine, too much. And he left quite a lot of the work of governing the country to various people, especially to this concubine‘s family and so on, which was absolutely disastrous. ―
The story goes that the Emperor sent his men over the land to find the most beautiful woman in China. They failed, of course, but then, when he was bathing here in the hot springs, he saw the 18-year-old daughter of a high official…the warm water running down her glistening, jade-like body, as the poet Bai Juyi tells the story.
“The Emperor had dreamed of a beauty who could topple an empire. ― ”Meanwhile, a girl in the Yang family came of age. ―
“And when she smiled she could melt the heart with a single glance. ― “And from that day the Emperor missed every morning court. ― “But then one day the ground was shaken by the war drums of a revolt. ― “An Lushan came in with his Tibetans, went straight to Chang‘an. Soldiers carried the Emperor and his favourites out of the capital overnight. It was so desperate an emergency. But when they got into the hills, because he was making for Sichuan, which was hilly, where he thought he would be safe, his bodyguards, a small group of