Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [41]
It is especially ironic, therefore, that the dynasty hailed as China's golden age was founded by a mixed-blooded man of part barbarian ancestry and that the Tang period was characterized above all by cosmopolitanism, embrace of cultural diversity, and an openness to foreigners unsurpassed in Chinese history.
THE RISE OF THE TANG DYNASTY (AD 618-907)
After the collapse of the Han dynasty in AD 220, China fell into three hundred years of fragmentation. By the late sixth century, northern China was dominated by rival warlords and aristocratic clans, often of mixed Chinese and Turkic heritage, while southern China was dominated by clans of “purer” Chinese stock.
In 581, the Sui clan succeeded in reuniting China, but their rule was short-lived. Constantly attacked by Turkic tribes from the steppe, racked by internal rebellion, and overextended militarily, the Sui dynasty collapsed after only thirty years. In 618, Li Yuan, a general belonging to the northern mixed Chinese-Turkic aristocracy, renounced his loyalty to the Sui, marched on the capital city of Changan (now Xian), and declared himself emperor of China, with the imperial title Gaozu (“High Ancestor”). Thus was founded the Tang dynasty, which would rule China for the next three hundred years.
How Gaozu conquered the Sui is extremely telling: He entered into a military alliance with the barbarian Eastern Turks. Moreover, in his letter to the Turkic ruler, Gaozu used the character qi— which is used by an inferior addressing a superior. For a would-be Chinese emperor to address a barbarian as an equal or, worse, as a superior amounted to sacrilege. In response to the objections of his horrified Confucian advisors, Gaozu explained: “The men of ancient times had a saying, ‘To bend before one man and stand above ten thousand.’ What do the barbarians beyond the frontier amount to in terms of this analogy? They merely amount to one ordinary person. Moreover, the word qi is not worth a thousand measures of gold. Even that I am willing to give away. Why should one worry about one word?”
Gaozu's shrewd diplomacy reflected the new realities of seventh-century China. China was now threatened on all sides by numerous powerful non-Chinese groups, including the Eastern and Western Turks, the Uighurs, the Khitan, and the Xi, all from the steppe lands north of China, as well as the Tibetans, the Nanzhao, and the Koguryö from the Korean peninsula. Maintaining a unified China in the face of these threats would require not just a Great Wall but complex relationships and alliances with different barbarian groups.5
Moreover, China's religious landscape had completely transformed since the fall of the Han dynasty. By the time the Tang emperors took power in 618, Buddhism—founded in India and brought to China by merchants and missionaries—had become China's predominant religion, with more followers than indigenous Taoism. Buddhism adapted itself to China by accommodating and absorbing local elements. While Buddhist and Taoist priests often fought bitterly, most ordinary Chinese had no problem worshipping Buddhist, Taoist, and local deities simultaneously. For the layman, Buddhism's promise of paradise was also far more appealing than the traditional Chinese view of the afterlife, in which a tiny few achieved immortality, with everyone else relegated to gloomy underworld jails.6
Finally, at least in northern China, the sharp line between Chinese and barbarians had blurred. During the centuries of anarchy between 220 and 581, a number of “barbarian” rulers conquered parts of northern China and established independent kingdoms. Many of these rulers