freedom to relocate to find virgin land to till, which would benefit both him and the government.
To make the land and tax laws work, the government had to have full and accurate information on the population and the land. So it undertook the compilation of a “household registry (census)” and a “land registry.” With this information in hand, the government knew whether an aristocratic family was holding more land than allowed by law, and whether a peasant family was misreporting able‐bodied adults as children or old people in order to avoid paying taxes in full.
To collect, organize, and keep current so much information was a daunting task. The fact that the Tang government bureaucracy was able to accomplish the task demonstrates its ability to organize a huge staff of highly skilled and disciplined men to work over a period of many years to achieve a goal. Succeeding dynasties and other Asian governments would try to duplicate the system with varying degrees of success.
These land and tax laws were well suited to the realities of Early Tang. Long years of war had shrunk the population, leaving large tracts of farm land unclaimed and uncultivated. This gave the emperor a free hand to distribute these abandoned lands to his supporters and landless peasants. But as time passed, conditions changed, and the system fell apart. Powerful families took possession of estates of ever‐increasing size, and passed them on within the family. This left the government with an ever‐shrinking reserve of land to distribute to an ever‐increasing peasant population. Consequently, the government had to give up the system.
Confucianism and the System of Imperial Examinations for the Civil Service
The System of Imperial Examinations for the Civil Service was introduced in the Han, strengthened in the Sui, and fully developed in the Tang. The Tang government, eager to reestablish Confucianism as the state ideology after it had been losing ground to Buddhism during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, founded state‐run universities to teach Confucian courses, and strengthened the Imperial Examination System. The exams tested the candidates on their knowledge of Confucian classics and their ability to apply its principles to solve contemporaneous issues. Successful candidates would be reviewed by the ministry of officeholders and appointed to government office according to their ability. These candidates had been trained in the basic skills of reading and writing and the Confucian and Legalist schools of statecraft, and indoctrinated to be loyal to the emperor. It was a meritocratic system: Its measure of a man’s qualification for office was his merit, not his birth. It ensured that the emperor would have the best and brightest men in his service. And since a blue bloodline alone would no longer qualify a man for high office, it broke the monopoly on government office by aristocratic families and opened up opportunities to the common man.
Now a direct link connected the mastery of Confucian scholarship and the holding of government office, which also meant access to personal wealth and power. Henceforth, young scholars would flock to state and private academies to study Confucianism with the express purpose of passing the exams and acquiring an appointment to government office. This was a uniquely Chinese route to upward mobility.
In theory, the imperial examination system was open to all men—rich and poor, high and low in birth. In practical terms, it was generally true that only upper‐class families could afford to provide their children with an education that would take a decade or two to complete. But there were always the lucky few, who, coming from lowly families, had the talent and opportunity to rise in legendary fashion to the very top. Poor talent could often draw on the wealth of his extended family or of the prosperous local landowners or merchants to pursue an academic and bureaucratic career.
In general, the examination system herded talented and ambitious young men into the bureaucracy in the service of the emperor, and the bulk of the candidates thus recruited would make competent bureaucrats loyal to the emperor. But it had an unintended consequence: A man could fail in the imperial examinations, turn his resentment against the establishment, and join the opposition or even join a rebel force. There would be more than a few such cases.
The “Golden Age” of Classical Chinese Poetry
Early Tang emperors were men full of confidence, which allowed them to view cultural diversity with tolerance. They did not persecute men for what they said or wrote, as did Qin Shihuang in his “literary inquisitions.” Instead, they patronized the arts and encouraged exchanges between Tang China and its neighbors. This social‐political environment ushered in the “Golden Age” of Chinese classical poetry, and produced some of China’s all‐time great poets. Even to this day, ordinary Chinese in their everyday life read and quote their favorite Tang poets.
Imperial examinations required the candidates to write poetry. The belief was that their poetry, as well as their handwriting, not only demonstrated their scholarship but also revealed their personal character. This made poetry writing a required course in one’s education. Soon every educated man could write poetry. And poetry soon took on a wide range of social functions as well: One would write a poem to mark a special occasion (such as a birthday, wedding, or funeral), to communicate with a friend, to seek the audience of an official, to praise the emperor or the gods and spirits, or as a personal pastime. In some cases, an emperor who was a poet himself would influence social taste by raising the social status of literary men.
China’s three all‐time best‐loved poets appeared in the Tang Dynasty.
Li Bai (701–762) was inspired by Daoism. His poems are free in spirit and dazzlingly colorful and flamboyant. They display a strong sense of individual autonomy expressed in a romantic style that is rich in imagery and imagination. He socialized with people of outstanding talent and status, but never rose in social status because of his idiosyncrasies. He refused to conform to norms of social behavior and indulged in long and heavy bouts of drinking. He is known as the “Poet Immortal.”
Du Fu (712–770), unlike the free‐spirited Li Bai, was imbued in the Confucian teachings of loyalty to the emperor and compassion for the common people. That made him self‐effacing. Most of his poems came at a time when Tang China was falling from the “Golden Age” and into a stage of decline and disintegration. The tensions between his lofty Confucian idealism and the abysmal reality before his eyes define the somber and heavy tone of his poetry. His poems conform impeccably to the strictest formal requirements of classical poetry. His great poetry never brought him worldly gain, and he spent his whole life as a petty government official. He is known as the “Poet Sage.”
Bai Juyi (772–846) was an exceptionally successful scholar‐official. Some of his poems, like Du Fu’s, express a deep sympathy for the plight of the common people. But his most memorable works are two romantic ballads: one about the unfulfilled love of an emperor, and the other about the quiet despair of a scholar‐official in exile. He is famed for writing in a colloquial style that is so simple and plain that even an uneducated old woman can appreciate them.
Buddhism
The Tang government practiced religious tolerance. While both Buddhism and Daoism were popular, the royal family increasingly moved from patronizing Buddhism to favoring Daoism, as did the royal family in the early Han Dynasty. Buddhism originated in India and entered China by way of the Silk Road toward the end of the Han Dynasty. The decline of the Han Dynasty discredited Confucianism and created a “belief vacuum,” which was fertile soil for Buddhism to take root in. Buddhist teachings that all people are equal, all people can enter Heaven, and all people should love one another had a strong appeal to people who lived precariously in a war‐ravaged land. Its belief in reincarnation gave hope to the hopeless. Its cosmology, abstract thinking, and emphasis on spirituality provided welcome relief to Han Chinese from their dry and rigid earth‐bound Confucianism. Its rich store of art, literature, and architecture also facilitated its spread. Later, the Kingdom of Northern Wei promoted it vigorously with the express purpose of using it as a tool to shape a national identity distinct from the Confucian culture of the Han Chinese.
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