Chinese History · Chronicle IV of X
唐 · Tang
Cosmopolitan Chang'an, Empress Wu and Li Bai: China's golden age.
Founding of the TangPolitical
Li Yuan proclaims the Tang dynasty at Chang'an, soon to become the greatest city on earth.
Rising from the collapse of the Sui, the Tang inherited a reunited empire and a working central government. Its capital Chang'an, laid out on a vast grid, would grow to over a million people — a cosmopolitan hub of merchants, monks and envoys from across Asia, and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road.
Emperor TaizongPolitical
Emperor Taizong presides over a model reign of good government, expanding the empire deep into Central Asia.
Coming to the throne after killing his brothers, Taizong nonetheless became the ideal Confucian ruler in later memory. He listened to frank ministers, lightened taxes, revived the examination system, and defeated the Eastern Turks — earning from the steppe peoples the title of Heavenly Khan and making Tang power supreme across Asia.
Emperor TaizongReligious
The monk Xuanzang returns from a sixteen-year pilgrimage to India, laden with Buddhist scriptures to translate.
Defying a travel ban, Xuanzang crossed the deserts and mountains to the Buddhist heartland of India, studied at the great monastery of Nalanda, and came home to a hero's welcome. His translations and his travelogue enriched Chinese Buddhism, and his journey was later transformed into the beloved novel Journey to the West.
Empress WuPolitical
Wu Zetian takes the throne in her own name — the only woman ever to rule China as emperor.
Rising from concubine to empress consort to sole ruler, Wu Zetian proclaimed her own Zhou dynasty in 690. Ruthless to her rivals but shrewd in government, she promoted able officials through the examinations, patronized Buddhism, and held the empire together, defying every Confucian norm about a woman's place.
_-_%E6%AD%A6%E5%89%87%E5%A4%A9.png?width=1024)
Emperor XuanzongCultural
Under Emperor Xuanzong the Tang reaches its cultural height, an age of poetry, music, and prosperity.
The early decades of Xuanzong's long reign were remembered as a golden age. The court patronized music and dance, foreign faiths and merchants filled Chang'an, and the greatest poets of China — Li Bai and Du Fu — gave voice to the era. It was the high noon of the Tang, before the storm.
The An Lushan RebellionMilitary
The general An Lushan revolts, plunging the empire into a catastrophic war from which the Tang never fully recovers.
The frontier general An Lushan marched on the capital, and the emperor fled while his soldiers forced the execution of his beloved consort Yang Guifei. The eight-year war and the census collapse that followed may have cost tens of millions of lives. The Tang endured for another century and a half, but its central power was permanently broken.
_(%E5%AE%89%E7%A6%84%E5%B1%B1)_(cropped).jpg?width=1024)
The Late TangCultural
A printed copy of the Diamond Sutra is made — the world's earliest dated, complete printed book.
Woodblock printing, developed to spread Buddhist texts, produced in 868 the Diamond Sutra scroll later found at Dunhuang — the oldest surviving printed book bearing a date. Centuries before Gutenberg, China had begun to mass-produce the written word, a revolution that would transform learning across East Asia.
The Fall of the TangPolitical
After rebellion and warlordism hollow out the dynasty, the last Tang emperor is deposed, opening a new age of division.
The Huang Chao rebellion of the 870s sacked the great cities and shattered what remained of Tang authority. In 907 the warlord Zhu Wen deposed the last emperor, and China fractured into the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The most brilliant empire of the medieval world had ended, but its poetry and prestige echoed for centuries.
