Chinese History · Chronicle III of X
六朝 · Six Dynasties
Three Kingdoms and Red Cliffs, the spread of Buddhism, and the reuniting Sui.
The End of the HanMilitary
The allied southern forces destroy Cao Cao's great fleet with fire, ensuring China would remain divided.
On the Yangtze in the winter of 208, the outnumbered armies of Liu Bei and Sun Quan turned back Cao Cao's bid to conquer the south. A fire-ship attack on his chained fleet, aided by unexpected winds, won one of the most celebrated battles in Chinese history and set the pattern of a divided empire for generations.
The Three KingdomsMilitary
With the Han gone, China divides among the rival kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu in an age immortalized in legend.
The warlord Cao Cao's son Cao Pi took the throne as emperor of Wei, while Liu Bei claimed the Han legacy in the west as Shu and Sun Quan ruled the south as Wu. Their wars, strategists and heroes — retold centuries later in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms — became the most beloved drama in Chinese literature.
The Western JinPolitical
The Jin dynasty conquers the last kingdom and reunites China — only to fall within decades to civil war and nomad invasion.
In 280 the Sima family's Jin dynasty absorbed Wu and restored a single empire, but the peace was brief. The ruinous War of the Eight Princes weakened the state, and in 311 nomad armies sacked the capital Luoyang. The court fled south of the Yangtze, and north China passed to a succession of non-Chinese kingdoms.
The Southern DynastiesCultural
In the cultured south, Wang Xizhi writes the Orchid Pavilion Preface, revered ever after as the summit of Chinese calligraphy.
The émigré aristocracy south of the Yangtze cultivated poetry, painting and calligraphy as marks of refinement. At a spring gathering in 353, Wang Xizhi composed the Lantingji Xu; its flowing brushwork became the model every later calligrapher studied, and the art of the brush was elevated to the highest of Chinese cultural pursuits.
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The Northern DynastiesReligious
Buddhism spreads across a divided China, and the Northern Wei carve colossal Buddhas into the cliffs at Yungang.
Carried along the Silk Road, Buddhism found in the chaos of the age a message of suffering and release that answered the times. Monasteries multiplied, pilgrims journeyed to India, and the Xianbei rulers of the Northern Wei sponsored the vast cave-temples of Yungang and Longmen, where China's own artistic vision reshaped the imported faith.
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The Sui DynastyPolitical
Emperor Wen founds the Sui dynasty and, in 589, reunites north and south after nearly three centuries of division.
Yang Jian, Emperor Wen, seized power in the north and then conquered the southern dynasty of Chen, ending 300 years of fragmentation. He rebuilt central government, revived the examinations, standardized law and coinage, and set the foundations on which the glorious Tang would build.
The Sui DynastyCultural
Emperor Yang builds the Grand Canal, linking the Yellow and Yangtze rivers and binding the rice south to the northern capitals.
The Grand Canal, built by millions of conscripted labourers, allowed grain from the fertile south to feed the north and the frontier armies — an economic artery that sustained every later dynasty. But the cost in lives and taxes, together with ruinous wars in Korea, turned the people against Emperor Yang and doomed his house.
The Sui DynastyPolitical
Rebellion overthrows the exhausted Sui, and the general Li Yuan founds the Tang dynasty, opening China's golden age.
Emperor Yang's failures ignited revolts across the empire, and in 618 he was murdered by his own guards. From the wreckage the aristocrat Li Yuan seized the capital and proclaimed the Tang. Building on the reunited, well-organized state the Sui had made, the Tang would become the most brilliant empire of the medieval world.
