Emperor Shenzong

Emperor Shenzong, whose personal name was Zhao Xu (趙頊), was born in 1048 and died in 1085. He was the sixth emperor of the Song dynasty, succeeding his father, Emperor Yingzong, in 1067 and reigning until his death under the era names Xining (1068–1077) and Yuanfeng (1078–1085).

His reign is remembered above all for the New Policies of the statesman Wang Anshi, the most ambitious reform programme of the Song, and for the bitter division they opened at court. It was also a remarkable age of learning. Sima Guang completed his great history, the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, and figures such as Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi (Su Dongpo) and the scientist Shen Kuo were active at court or in opposition to it.

Wang Anshi and the New Policies

Shenzong came to the throne at eighteen, determined to strengthen a state burdened by the cost of a huge army and an empty treasury. He found his instrument in Wang Anshi, who had argued for sweeping change in a long memorial to Emperor Renzong years before. Wang joined the government in 1069, set up a new office to plan the reforms and became chief minister in 1070.

The Reforms

The New Policies touched almost every part of government:

• Green Sprouts loans. The state lent money to farmers in spring, to be repaid at harvest at lower interest than moneylenders charged.
• Land survey. New surveys of farmland were ordered to make the land tax fairer.
• State trade. The government bought local specialities in one region and sold them in another, and a market exchange bureau bought goods for resale to steady prices.
• Hired service. Compulsory labour service was replaced by a graduated tax, which paid for hired labour instead.
• Baojia militia. To reduce the cost of a professional army, villages were organised into militia units that kept order in peacetime and could serve as reserves in war.
• Horses. To build up the cavalry, the government assigned horses to peasant households in the north and north-west to raise and keep.
• Examinations. From 1071 the examinations tested essays on the classics and on policy rather than poetry, and Wang's own commentaries on the classics became the official reading.

Opposition and Wang Anshi's Retirement

The reforms met fierce opposition. Sima Guang, Han Qi, Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi were among the critics, who argued that the state was competing with its own people for profit and that local officials were forcing loans on farmers who did not want them. Sima Guang withdrew to Luoyang to write history, and in 1079 Su Shi was arrested over poems said to mock the government and banished to Huangzhou.

A severe drought in 1074 gave the opposition its chance. A minor official, Zheng Xia, presented the emperor with a painting of starving refugees and blamed the reforms, and Wang resigned. He returned in 1075 but retired for good in 1076. Shenzong kept many of the policies in force and from 1080 reorganised the offices of the central government himself, in what are called the Yuanfeng reforms. The scale of the programme and the difficulty of carrying it out through the bureaucracy limited its success.

Wars on the Frontiers

Shenzong meant his stronger state to win back ground on the frontiers. In 1072 and 1073 the general Wang Shao campaigned in the Xihe region of modern Gansu, bringing territory on the western border under Song control. In 1075 the Vietnamese kingdom of Dai Viet attacked the southern frontier, and a Song counter-invasion in 1076 and 1077 ended without a decisive result.

The main target was the Western Xia, the Tangut state on the Song north-west frontier. The great offensive of 1081 failed, and in 1082 a Song army was destroyed at the newly built fortress of Yongle. The Western Xia remained a threat to the Song for decades afterwards.

Scholarship and Science

Some of the greatest works of the reign came from the reforms' opponents. Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, which the emperor named, was completed in 1084. It records Chinese history from 403 BCE, in the Warring States period, to 959 CE, on the eve of the Song.

Under Shenzong the Seven Military Classics were also assembled into a single official collection. It included the Questions and Replies between Tang Taizong and Li Weigong, a text that many scholars regard as a later forgery.

Shen Kuo served the court as director of the astronomical bureau and as an envoy to the Liao. His Dream Pool Essays, written in retirement after he was disgraced over the Yongle defeat, record much of the science and technology of the age.

Death and Succession

Emperor Shenzong fell ill and died in 1085 at the age of 36. He was buried in the Yongyu Mausoleum among the Northern Song imperial tombs at Gongyi in Henan. He was succeeded by his young son, who reigned as Emperor Zhezong. Zhezong's personal name is also romanised as Zhao Xu, though it is written with a different Chinese character.

As Zhezong was still a child, his grandmother, Grand Empress Dowager Gao, ruled as regent until her death in 1093. Under her, the conservative officials led by Sima Guang reversed most of the New Policies. Shenzong's reforms were revived under Zhezong's personal rule and again under his brother, the Huizong Emperor, and the quarrel between the two parties divided the court until the fall of the Northern Song.

Ceramics of the Shenzong Reign

Shenzong's reign falls in the high period of the northern kilns. The Ding kilns of Hebei made fine ivory-white porcelain, often carved, and the Yaozhou kilns of Shaanxi made olive-green celadon with deeply carved and, increasingly, moulded designs. A stele set up at the Yaozhou kilns in 1084 honours the god of the kilns and gives a rare contemporary description of the potters' work. In the south, Jingdezhen was making its pale bluish-white qingbai porcelain, and the Longquan celadon kilns were growing. Ru ware for the court is usually dated to the decades after his death.

Song ceramics carry no reign marks, so pieces are dated by their shape, glaze and body and by comparison with excavated finds, and none can be assigned to a single reign. Our guide to Song dynasty ceramics explains the main wares, and examples of the period are in our Song dynasty porcelain collection.