The Tang Dynasty

The Tang grew out of the collapse of the short-lived Sui dynasty, which had reunited China in 589. The second Sui emperor, Yang, completed the Grand Canal and launched three costly campaigns against the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. The burden of labour and conscription provoked rebellions across the country, and in 618 he was murdered by his own officers, led by Yuwen Huaji.

Li Yuan, Duke of Tang and a Sui commander based at Taiyuan, had already risen in 617 and taken Chang'an. In 618 he proclaimed a new dynasty and reigned as Emperor Gaozu. His second son, Li Shimin, led many of the campaigns that defeated rival claimants. In 626 Li Shimin killed two of his brothers at the Xuanwu Gate of the palace, and within months his father abdicated in his favour.

As Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649) he became one of the most admired rulers in Chinese history. His armies defeated the Eastern Turks in 630 and opened the routes across Central Asia, and his court was remembered for the frank advice he accepted from his ministers.

Chang'an, on the site of modern Xi'an, was laid out by the Sui and taken over by the Tang. Its outer walls ran for roughly 9.7 kilometres from east to west and 8.6 kilometres from north to south. A grid of streets divided the city into 108 walled wards, each with its own gates, which were closed at night. From the Mingde Gate in the south a broad avenue ran north to the imperial city and the palace.

Trade was confined to two official markets, the East Market and the West Market, and the West Market was home to merchants from Central Asia and Persia. The city probably held around a million people, which made it one of the largest cities in the world at the time, and it drew envoys, monks and students from Japan, Korea and across Asia.

Wu Zhao entered the palace as a junior consort of Taizong and, after his death, became a consort of his son, Emperor Gaozong. In 655 Gaozong made her empress. When he fell ill around 660 she began to take part in government, and she came to direct it. The traditional histories accuse her of ruthless methods, including the deaths of rivals and of her own children. They were written by historians hostile to her rule and are hard to test, but her rise was certainly hard fought.

After Gaozong died in 683 she deposed one son and kept another as a figurehead, and in 690 she declared her own Zhou dynasty. As Wu Zetian she is the only woman in Chinese history to have ruled as emperor in her own name. She widened recruitment through the examinations, gave lavish support to Buddhism and governed until 705, when she was forced to abdicate and the Tang was restored.

Women remained powerful at court for some years afterwards. Empress Wei, wife of the restored Emperor Zhongzong, and the poet and official Shangguan Wan'er were both killed in 710 in a coup led by Li Longji. Li Longji took the throne in 712 as Emperor Xuanzong. His aunt, Princess Taiping, remained a rival power until 713, when she was accused of plotting against him and forced to take her own life.

The Tang inherited from the Sui a centralised state run through three departments and six ministries, a written legal code and a system of land allotment. Officials were chosen partly through the civil service examinations. Under the early Tang most senior posts still went to men from the great aristocratic families, but the jinshi degree, which tested literary composition, grew in prestige, and success in it became the mark of a cultivated official.

Under Xuanzong the dynasty reached its height. His Kaiyuan era (713–741) is remembered as a time of peace, full granaries and brilliant court culture. Tang power reached deep into Central Asia, although defeat by an Abbasid army at the Talas River in 751 marked the limit of its reach to the west.

The Tang court welcomed foreigners and foreign goods. Sogdian merchants ran much of the caravan trade, and Central Asian musicians, dancers and grooms were in demand in the capital. Fashionable men and women adopted Central Asian dress, and polo, which reached China from Persia by way of Central Asia, was played by courtiers and emperors alike.

Buddhism reached the peak of its influence. Monasteries owned great estates, and the cave temples at Longmen, near Luoyang, were extended on an imperial scale. The ruling house also honoured Daoism and claimed descent from Laozi. Foreign communities brought Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Islam and the Church of the East, whose inscribed stele of 781 survives in Xi'an.

Tolerance had its limits. In the 840s, under Emperor Wuzong, a committed Daoist, the state closed thousands of Buddhist monasteries, returned hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns to lay life and suppressed the other foreign religions. Buddhism recovered, but it never regained its former wealth.

The Tang is the classic age of Chinese poetry. An anthology compiled for the Qing court in the early eighteenth century gathered nearly 49,000 Tang poems by more than 2,200 poets. The best known are Li Bai, with his free and exuberant verse; Du Fu, whose poems record the suffering of the An Lushan rebellion; Wang Wei; and later Bai Juyi, who wrote in deliberately plain language.

Painting ranked alongside poetry. Yan Liben, a minister of state, was famed for figure painting, and Wu Daozi for Buddhist murals in the temples of Chang'an and Luoyang. Han Gan painted the horses of the imperial stables, and Zhang Xuan and Zhou Fang painted the ladies of the court. Later critics credited Wang Wei, poet and painter, with founding monochrome ink landscape.

Woodblock printing developed in the same period, first for Buddhist texts and charms. A copy of the Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang and dated 868 is the earliest dated printed book to survive. Tea drinking spread across the empire, and Lu Yu's Classic of Tea, written in the eighth century, was the first book devoted to it. Our article on Tang dynasty art and inventions covers these subjects in more detail.

Tang pottery is among the most recognisable in Chinese art. Sancai, or "three colour", ware is low-fired earthenware covered in lead glazes of amber, green and cream, which were allowed to run and mingle in the kiln. Most of it was made for burial in the late seventh and first half of the eighth century: horses, camels, grooms, guardian figures and vessels to furnish the tombs of the elite. Blue from imported cobalt appears on some pieces but is rare.

High-fired wares were just as important. The Xing kilns in Hebei made a fine white porcelain, while the Yue kilns of Zhejiang made a grey-green celadon; Lu Yu ranked Yue bowls the best for tea. In the ninth century the Changsha kilns in Hunan painted in brown and green under the glaze and exported their wares on a large scale. The white and green wares of the Tang laid the ground for the porcelain of the Song, examples of which are in our Song dynasty porcelain collection.

Gold and silver vessels, often following Persian and Sogdian shapes, and cast bronze mirrors decorated with lions among grapevines are other classic Tang forms.

Tang ceramics carry no reign marks. They are dated by shape, body and glaze, and by comparison with finds from dated tombs. Sancai figures have been copied in great numbers, and good copies are hard to tell from originals by eye, so the history of a piece matters as much as its appearance.

The turning point came in 755, when An Lushan, a general of Sogdian and Turkic descent who commanded the northern frontier armies, rebelled and declared himself emperor of a new Yan dynasty. His forces took Luoyang and then Chang'an. Xuanzong fled towards Sichuan, and on the way his troops forced the death of his favourite consort, Yang Guifei. The rebellion was put down only in 763, with the help of Uyghur troops, after years of fighting that cost an immense number of lives.

The dynasty survived for another century and a half, but in weaker form. Military governors (jiedushi) in the provinces became almost independent, and the empire lost its Central Asian territories. From 875 the rebellion of Huang Chao, a failed examination candidate turned salt smuggler, swept across the country; his forces took Luoyang and, in the winter of 880–881, Chang'an.

One of his lieutenants, Zhu Wen, went over to the Tang in 882 and rose to become the most powerful general in the north. In 904 he moved the court to Luoyang and had Emperor Zhaozong killed. In 907 he deposed the boy Emperor Ai and founded the Later Liang, and the following year Emperor Ai was killed. China then divided into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms until the rise of the Song.