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By Root 1072 0

all presented to Tang emperors by foreign emissaries as gifts. Foreigners themselves were often cherished “goods.” Wealthy Chinese families bought foreign slaves to serve in their households, and foreign musicians, dancers, dwarfs, and courtesans were sent to the Tang court as gifts from foreign rulers. Though there were periodic attempts to wean themselves from corrupting foreign exotics, the Chinese simply could not get enough foreign goods.”

Love of foreign things, however, should not be confused with love of foreigners. Among most Chinese, suspicion and hatred of foreigners always coexisted with love of their products. Indeed, Taizong's alliances with barbarian tribes were deeply opposed by his own largely Confucian court, which remained stubbornly committed to the idea of inherent Chinese superiority.

This ethnocentric worldview was reflected in the enormously influential Tang Code, promulgated by Taizong's legal advisors and later adopted, sometimes in its entirety, by subsequent dynasties, as well as by rulers in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. At least on paper, the Tang Code called for the segregation of Chinese and non-Chinese. Under the code, foreign settlements were generally limited to the trade centers of Changan, Luoyang, Canton, and Yangzhou, and to the corridors along the land trade routes. Moreover, foreigners were not supposed to talk to Chinese unless they had business with them, and Chinese who married foreigners were to be exiled to a distance of 2,000 //’ (roughly 400 miles).

These provisions, however, were not strictly enforced. Indeed, it is difficult to square the segregationist Tang Code with the realities of the Tang imperial family. Taizong himself was the product of Chinese-barbarian intermarriage, and strategic marriages with the ruling families of the steppe were a common Tang device for cementing critical alliances. In addition, Taizong was extraordinarily receptive to foreigners and foreign influences. For example, Taizong relocated 70,000 people from Korea into China; Korean aristocrats and officials who settled in China were given honorific titles. At another point, over the intense objections of some advisors, Taizong brought a hundred Turkic families to Changan, to test whether they could be assimilated into Chinese culture. He also ensured that Chinese and non-Chinese soldiers served together in integrated military units.

Moreover, Taizong was conspicuously open to foreign religions. Around 645, China's most famous Buddhist monk, Xuan-zang, returned to Changan after a sixteen-year pilgrimage in central Asia and India, bringing with him more than 650 Indian texts and 150 “authentic” relics of Buddha. Emperor Taizong received the home-coming monk with great honor, showering him with gifts and granting him a title. At the emperor's request, Xuan-zang recorded his travels, describing in colorful detail his adventures in Bactria, Persia, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and eventually India, where he had been warmly received by the great Hindu king Siladitya.12

With Emperor Taizong as his patron, Xuanzang devoted the rest of his life to translating the Sanskrit texts he had brought back. The emperor was deeply influenced by the monk. The year before he died, when poor health led him to seek Buddhist longevity drugs, Taizong declared Buddhism superior to Chinese religions. (Some historians now believe that the Buddhist drugs, administered by an Indian doctor claiming to be two hundred years old, unfortunately may have poisoned the emperor.)13

In fact, Taizong's reign was one of the most religiously pluralistic in Chinese history. Taizong welcomed not only Buddhism but the new, unfamiliar religions that foreigners from even farther west brought with them to Tang China. During his reign, Zoroastrian-ism, Manichaeism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—all introduced to China by travelers along the Silk Road—were freely practiced by their largely foreign followers. In Changan's Western Market, where the foreign population clustered, Persian merchants sacrificed live animals at Zoroastrian fire altars, while