The Tang Dynasty ruled China from 618 to 907. For much of that time, and above all in its first century and a half, China enjoyed peace and prosperity and was one of the strongest states in the world.
The Tang is often called a golden age of Chinese civilisation.
As the Sui Dynasty collapsed, Li Yuan, the military commander at Taiyuan in Shanxi, rose in revolt in 617 and took the capital, Chang’an. He placed a young Sui prince on the throne as a puppet emperor and governed in his name.
When the Sui emperor Yang was murdered in 618, Li Yuan took the throne himself and founded the Tang Dynasty. At its height, Tang power reached from the Korean peninsula to northern Vietnam and westward into Central Asia.
The Tang Dynasty was a brilliant period for Chinese arts and culture.
Music and dance flourished at court, where large orchestras played bells, stone chimes, flutes, drums and zithers.
Tang China also welcomed foreign ideas. Merchants from Persia and Central Asia travelled the Silk Road to Chang’an, Arab and Persian traders came by sea to the southern ports, and the music and dance of Central Asia became fashionable at court.
Poetry was the greatest pride of the Tang. Poets drew on earlier forms and perfected new ones, above all lüshi (regulated verse) and jueju (quatrains), which became highly popular.
Nearly 50,000 poems by more than 2,000 Tang poets survive. Short stories, histories and encyclopaedias were also written.
The period also saw important advances in technology. Woodblock printing developed under the Tang, and the Diamond Sutra of 868 is the earliest dated printed book to survive.
Tang alchemists made the earliest known experiments with gunpowder, and the kilns of northern China made fine white porcelain, notably Xing ware. Map-making and astronomical instruments also advanced in this period.
The porcelain that followed: Song dynasty ceramics and Song pieces in our collection.
