- 9 months ago
Documentary, BBC-The Story of China 2 Silk Roads and China Ships-BBC－《中國的故事2：絲路與中國船舶》
The Last Empire
The Story of China
Episode 5 of 6
China's last empire, the Qing, lasted from 1644 to 1912. It began in violence and war as the Manchus swept down from the north, but invaders became emperors, with three generations of one family ruling the country. Among them, Michael Wood argues, was China's greatest emperor - Kangxi.
Under the Qing, China doubled in size to include Xinjiang in the far west, as well as Mongolia and Tibet, creating the essential shape of China today. The new dynasty tolerated a diversity of cultures and religions, including Islam. In Kaifeng, Michael visits a women's mosque with a female imam, a delightful scene that ends with laughter and selfies! The Qing also undertook huge cultural enterprises. At a traditional printing house where the wood blocks are hand-carved, we see how the Complete Tang Poems were reproduced - all 48,000 of them. We travel through the wintry countryside to a remote village where a hardy audience watch open-air opera in the snow and visit a painter's studio, and 'storytelling' houses in Yangzhou.
In the 18th century, China was arguably the greatest economy in the world, and we get a fabulous sense of the rich culture that came with prosperity. But then came the clash with the British, in the first Opium War, when a British expedition destroyed the Qing navy and extracted territory and trading rights. We leave with a glimpse of the future. 'Every dynasty has risen and declined,' says Michael, 'and has needed new life to regenerate, and this time the catalyst was the British.' Among the ports China ceded was an almost uninhabited island, Hong Kong, one of today's greatest financial centres, and Shanghai, a small town then but now one of the greatest cities in world.
The Last Empire
The Story of China
Episode 5 of 6
China's last empire, the Qing, lasted from 1644 to 1912. It began in violence and war as the Manchus swept down from the north, but invaders became emperors, with three generations of one family ruling the country. Among them, Michael Wood argues, was China's greatest emperor - Kangxi.
Under the Qing, China doubled in size to include Xinjiang in the far west, as well as Mongolia and Tibet, creating the essential shape of China today. The new dynasty tolerated a diversity of cultures and religions, including Islam. In Kaifeng, Michael visits a women's mosque with a female imam, a delightful scene that ends with laughter and selfies! The Qing also undertook huge cultural enterprises. At a traditional printing house where the wood blocks are hand-carved, we see how the Complete Tang Poems were reproduced - all 48,000 of them. We travel through the wintry countryside to a remote village where a hardy audience watch open-air opera in the snow and visit a painter's studio, and 'storytelling' houses in Yangzhou.
In the 18th century, China was arguably the greatest economy in the world, and we get a fabulous sense of the rich culture that came with prosperity. But then came the clash with the British, in the first Opium War, when a British expedition destroyed the Qing navy and extracted territory and trading rights. We leave with a glimpse of the future. 'Every dynasty has risen and declined,' says Michael, 'and has needed new life to regenerate, and this time the catalyst was the British.' Among the ports China ceded was an almost uninhabited island, Hong Kong, one of today's greatest financial centres, and Shanghai, a small town then but now one of the greatest cities in world.
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00:00China, a global superpower, eyes set on the future, its arrival on the world stage greeted
00:12like the appearance of a new planet. But it's not the first time. In the 7th century, when
00:20Europe was in its dark age, Tang Dynasty China became the greatest power on earth and would
00:26be for a thousand years till the rise of the West. What's happening now has happened before.
00:33I'm in Xi'an, the capital of the Tang, which 1,300 years ago was the greatest and most
00:40cosmopolitan city on earth. And what made it great was not only its economic and cultural
00:48power, its sense of its own identity, but its openness to other cultures.
00:54Standing over the square, the statue of one of the heroes of that time, one of the great
01:00figures in the history of civilisation, the Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, who brought the wisdom
01:06of India back here to China. This is the tale of a time which even now the Chinese see as
01:12a golden age. In the story of China, we've reached the Tang Dynasty.
01:19Parker Holders to the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty is one of the greatest
01:24dark age of the world in波ades. The Tang Dynasty has been a very strong history of the
01:28world of the国. In the story of China, we have a very strong force, the character of the
01:30world. The Orange County has been a very strong force, and he has kept his own
01:31use of the power of the world. In the story of the world, the turn of the world's
01:33autre. The Tang Dynasty is an early charge of the world in the Luxury
01:33and the King Dynasty. The Ang courses had been a very strong force, but it's lulled around
01:36from a long range of the curso of the world. We've reached the world and the
01:37world's important, and it's a warm- attentive team. We'll go everywhere if you like to the world's
01:38It's often said that in history, China has been a closed civilisation, introverted,
02:01cutting itself off from the world.
02:02And there have been times when it's looked that way, but since prehistory, China has never
02:12been isolated and has thrived on contact.
02:18And the Tang Dynasty was a great age of international connection.
02:23That time, vast numbers of foreign peoples poured into China with exotic goods, foods
02:30and ideas and even new religions, and the great pathway of exchange was the Silk Road.
02:41We call it the Silk Road today, but it wasn't really one road, but a series of land routes
02:48connecting China with the Mediterranean and India.
02:52And the Silk Road turned China for the first time into a global civilisation.
03:00Along it, just as today, were many cultures and peoples, different religions, different
03:06ways of seeing the world.
03:09Thank you, thank you so much.
03:11spoilers.
03:12For the magic of the Silk Road, magic of Central Asia.
03:17There's Han Chinese, there's Uighurs everywhere.
03:21It's a guy from Kyrgyzstan.
03:22He can tell by his ham.
03:23just like it would have been in ancient times you would have seen Arabs and
03:27Persians, probably Indians along with the Han Chinese on this very edge of you
03:34know Tang Dynasty China. Greek historian Polybius has a very interesting remark
03:39about this he's writing in the 100s BC he says that in ancient times the
03:46histories of Europe and Asia were completely separate they ran their own
03:50way but from our age onwards the history of Europe began to interact and engage
03:57with the history of Asia and history Asia with that of Europe. You could say it's
04:03the beginning of universal history and it's happening in the Tang Dynasty but in
04:13history when two civilizations first come into contact it's not always peaceful
04:18and not always enriching
04:24to really open up to another culture needs patience and humility to be willing to
04:29shed your own preconceptions and in the 7th century the Chinese were confident
04:37enough to do that to be changed by the experience of the other
04:47the story begins at the Chinese end of the Silk Road in the old city of Luoyang
04:53Luoyang was the the ancient capital of the Zhou Dynasty for 500 years and for those centuries its poets and scholars have praised it as a place of great
04:54culture it was the real heart of China they said in the middle of the middle plain of the middle
05:11kingdom and this is not just a story about empires and economies but about what it is to be civilized it's about a new spirit in Chinese culture
05:27look at this magic world Aladdin's cave a spirit that will give birth to the
05:34greatest age of Chinese poetry a time when poetry came out of the court into the
05:40streets a witness to the times expressing the human condition as never before
05:46this is a time so do move famous poem of the Tang Dynasty knowing the
05:54insecurity of human life as the Chinese always have this floating life is just
06:01like the water under the ice flowing eastwards day and night and no one
06:08notices it's not great so it's a place rich in culture rich in trade and merchants
06:18and interested in foreigners and if you want to see just how interested go a few
06:27miles outside Luoyang where the most famous Indian of all time is commemorated the
06:34Buddha the foreigner who most fascinated the Chinese through the whole of their
06:40history the adoption of this Indian religion would leave its mark on the very
06:47DNA of Chinese civilization what better symbol is there of the impact of Buddhism
06:54on Tang Dynasty China indeed a symbol of the impact of the exchange of ideas in
07:00civilizations than this great cliff pockmarked with devotion and in the
07:05middle that huge image of the Buddha himself whose message had been carried
07:10along what the Chinese called the road carrying the jewel of truth
07:23how that happened how China embraced Buddhism is one of the great stories in
07:29history an adventure that generations of storytellers have turned into China's
07:37favorite fairytale
07:39the emperor had a dream and in the dream a strange man appeared to him with his skin the
07:55color of the color of gold framed by the Sun and moon and stars
07:59how do you want that time
08:00how do you want that time
08:02how do you see this stuff
08:03what's in the court astrologers and diviners interpreted the dream
08:08how do you mean the job
08:10but this man had come from the west and it must be the Buddha himself
08:17the emperor was fascinated and organized an expedition 18 courtiers and scholars with all their
08:25attendants journeyed out to the west to find out more they got as far as Afghanistan and there in a
08:32Buddhist monastery they met two Indian monks who agreed to come back with them to China
08:39they came back here and were established in this monastery the white horse pagoda after the white horses that they rode
08:50and they translated the first Buddhist scriptures ever to be rendered into Chinese and they died here and were buried here
08:58this is the tomb of one of them Kasyapa Matanga
09:02it's not the first exchange between India and China but from that moment onwards the dialogue of civilisations will be continuous
09:12now the story moves on in time to the year 600
09:22in the wider world the Roman Empire has fallen
09:25Byzantium is flowering and in China the mandate of heaven has passed to a new dynasty the tongue
09:37in a village outside Luoyang
09:40a boy was born who would become one of the most famous people in Chinese history
09:46and his name was Xuanzang
09:51Xuanzang must have known this place very well from childhood and known all the stories especially
10:01about the two strangers who'd come from India I was inflamed by a passionate curiosity he says
10:07about the Buddha and about the origins of the faith and I applied for a foreign travel permit several
10:13times to no avail perhaps because I was a nobody and in the end I took matters into my own hand
10:21and I left in secret for India
10:31he was 26 years old and his journey would change the course of Chinese civilization
10:38it's a story that's fascinated me over the years traveling in his footsteps between China and Central
10:44Malaysia and across Afghanistan into India
10:48at that time Xuanzang said the tongue were new on the throne China's frontiers didn't extend far
10:55there was a ban on foreign travel at first I had to move by night to dodge the border guards
11:01the real life adventures of Xuanzang gave birth to some of China's best loved legends and characters
11:14the tongue monk and his crazy companions
11:16the lustful piggy the dimwitted Sandy and above all the faithful monkey
11:27all of them changed by their magical encounters along the silk road
11:33in later novels and films it turned into the kind of fantasy the Chinese have always loved both
11:50a comic adventure and spiritual allegory
11:59on the real journey Xuanzang tells of oceans of sand
12:02and the exotic peoples whose lands he passed through
12:06my fellow buddhist tried to persuade me not to risk my life further he said
12:12but i must reach the west
12:14if i don't there's no point in coming back
12:18and i must reach the west
12:27through time the story just grew and grew
12:31the traveling shadow puppet players still played out in the villages
12:40and the city storytellers say that to tell the tale in full would take 110 days
12:49of them
12:53all the different people
12:54follow them
12:59during his life
13:05the weekend
13:10the river
13:12so today is one of the great myths of Chinese culture a strange and wonderful
13:29afterlife for a real tongue monk it's one signs one of those rare people who
13:39turn up in history visionary great scholar and yet possessive incredible physical
13:51toughness and bravery and stamina after three years and nearly 5,000 miles he
14:01says we crossed the great snowy mountains and came down into India
14:12he crossed the river Indus and entered the plains of India with their teeming kingdoms and cities
14:18he traveled with Buddhist pilgrims down the Grand Trunk Road to the river Ganges
14:32and finally he reached Bodh Gaya and the sacred Bodhi tree where a thousand years before the Buddha had
14:53sat in meditation and gained enlightenment and when I saw it Xuanzang says I lay on the
15:04ground and shed many tears he stayed in India for 10 years studying the Buddha's teachings his noble
15:15truth about the human condition then he set off home to take them back to the Chinese people to fire
15:24their imaginations as his story has ever since four-year-old Xiaoyun Hao is hoping to be one of the next
15:38generation of monkey storytellers to know she tell you she saw she are shall they are there for
15:47boo-boo to shout to just a young teenager you will believe I y'all sure don't have your job
15:53show the value jada t-day need for a keo-da boo-hobe she don't don't be a high-wantish
16:02On the top of the page, it was written on the page,
16:05on the page, on the page, on the page,
16:08on the page, on the page,
16:11on the page, on the page,
16:14on the page, on the page.
16:23The China he came back to in 643
16:26was the largest and strongest country on Earth.
16:29Its capital, Chang'an, today's Xi'an,
16:32was one of the world's great centres of civilisation.
16:40And as for the emperor himself,
16:42Taizong was at the height of his powers
16:45and a stickler for protocol.
16:49The emperor's first words to Xuanzang were,
16:51Welcome back.
16:55But you never asked permission to go.
16:58Well, said Xuanzang,
17:00I applied for a permit for foreign travel on several occasions,
17:04but it never worked.
17:06Perhaps because I was a nobody.
17:11He wasn't a nobody now.
17:13Crowds came just to look at him.
17:16He's supposed to be very good looking,
17:21which certainly stood him in good stead.
17:24He was a very good looking man.
17:28I think it's difficult to underestimate
17:30how much Xuanzang really aroused people's interest in it,
17:35because so many people came to welcome him,
17:37so many people wanted to have to squint at him.
17:39In fact, he had to shut his doors and say,
17:41no more visitors, please,
17:43so that he could get on with some work.
17:45It was my life's task, Xuanzang said,
17:55to bring the Buddha's teachings to the people of China,
17:59for the benefit of generations to come.
18:02The Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was built to house the manuscripts he brought back.
18:11Most were lost long ago in wars and revolutions,
18:14but for a few precious fragments.
18:17So these are in Pali?
18:19Yeah.
18:20This is the language of South India and Sri Lanka.
18:37657 books in 520 packages on 20 pack horses.
18:47It must make you feel very proud to be monks here.
18:51It must make you feel very proud to be monks here.
18:54Yes.
19:04The emperor now commissioned Xuanzang
19:06to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.
19:13In the history of civilization,
19:15it's a project comparable to the Arabic translations out of Greek,
19:19or the Bible from Greek into Latin.
19:24With the permission of the emperor, he got quite a team together.
19:32He had 12 people in his team of Buddhists who knew about the literature,
19:38and he had eight people also in the team who were phrase connectors,
19:44is what they're called.
19:46People who tried to put things into Chinese at the time.
19:49It was all part of Taizong's insatiable appetite for learning.
19:57He was one of China's great rulers,
20:00a model of the Confucian virtuous man.
20:04He was a philosopher prince, poet and rationalist.
20:08And he thought that ruling was inseparable from the patronage of culture.
20:12And now, Taizong wouldn't leave Xuanzang alone.
20:17Xuanzang was supposed to be doing all this translation work,
20:21but he didn't have time.
20:22He had to spend all his time at court,
20:24trying to fulfil the emperor's need for conversation.
20:27He was a man who was consumed by curiosity.
20:33The emperor himself said that the scriptures of Buddhism
20:37are as unfathomable as the depths of the sea or the height of the sky.
20:43In comparison, the teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu and the nine schools
20:48are just a single island in a great ocean.
20:52The emperor was so impressed by his bearings of intelligence
20:59that he asked him to hang up his Buddhist robe
21:02and to become his prime minister, help me run the country.
21:07And Xuanzang refused him.
21:10He said,
21:11It would be like taking a boat out of the water.
21:14Not only would it cease to be useful,
21:17but in time it would rot away.
21:20Xuanzang died in 664.
21:25His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu near Xi'an.
21:30Xuanzang died in 664.
21:33His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu near Xi'an.
21:37Spared in the cultural revolution of the 1960s at the command of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai himself.
21:55Too precious to the collective memory of the Chinese people.
22:00Over the centuries, Buddhism would profoundly touch the Chinese soul, as it still does.
22:09And back then, perhaps this Indian religion brought something they felt their culture lacked.
22:16A spiritual path based on personal conscience and compassion.
22:21For me, it's almost a homage to a fellow traveller.
22:26He travelled most of his route through Xinjaong and the northwest frontier of Pakistan
22:30and all the way across India to Patna.
22:32And to think he did most of that on foot.
22:36Here's Xuanzang, the great traveller.
22:49Can't believe that he had sandals on the Hindu Kush.
22:55A huge framed backpack here, made out of bamboo.
22:59Can you see the bamboo strips?
23:01With all the scrolls of the manuscripts stored there.
23:05Of course, actually, he had all that stuff in cases.
23:08It's a symbolic picture.
23:10And finally, the lovely touch here.
23:13A lantern to illuminate his journey at night.
23:18After he'd returned from China, Xuanzang kept in touch with his old Indian friends by letter.
23:32And those letters, though unknown in the west,
23:36are among the most moving documents in the history of civilisation.
23:41In fact, in my opinion, they tell you what civilisation really is.
23:47Written by a member of one culture who had lovingly and totally immersed himself in another.
23:55He writes the news.
23:57The great emperor of the tongue, he says, is joyfully supporting Buddhism.
24:03And ruling with justice and mercy like a compassionate Chakravatin.
24:08The old Sanskrit Indian word for a great ruler.
24:12But it's his letter to the abbot of Bodhgaya which is the most touching.
24:16Indeed, all the more so because they belong to opposed schools of Buddhism.
24:25A great while has elapsed since we were parted, he writes,
24:35which has only increased my admiration for you.
24:40I'm sending you my very best wishes.
24:46Of the works that we brought back from India, I've already translated 30.
24:55And two more will be finished by the end of the year.
24:58And there's one more thing.
25:05On my way back from India, I lost a horse load of manuscripts,
25:10forwarding the river Indus.
25:12I'm sending you a list of the books in the hope that perhaps you can get them translated and sent to me.
25:19This is all for now.
25:24Best wishes.
25:26The monk, Swan San.
25:28In the seventh century, Xi'an was the greatest city in the world.
25:47Half a million people where the biggest European city had only a few thousand.
25:53It was a dynamic place of new styles, new fashions and new music.
26:14The city, it was said, was laid out like a vast chess ball.
26:26About five miles square.
26:28And we're just here at this corner.
26:33Tang Xi'an was strictly regulated.
26:35That was the way Chinese cities had always been.
26:38Vast gated royal enclosures where public access was controlled.
26:43Xi'an had 108 wards, all of them under curfew.
26:48So this was an unseen ward in Tang dynasty times,
26:52in between a palace area and the great government area over there.
26:58So it was quite posh, quite well to do.
27:01There were some mansions of court musicians, a princess lived down the road.
27:09Looks like you can still buy some of their garden ornaments, doesn't it?
27:16The city was low rise.
27:18Palaces, residential quarters, gardens.
27:21Almost every ward had Buddhist and Taoist temples.
27:24Ni ha, ni ha.
27:25Ni ha.
27:26Ni ha.
27:27You see all the things for temples here, incense.
27:31That's because, right back to the Tang dynasty,
27:35there was a huge temple in this area.
27:38And it's still a Taoist temple today, the Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:49There you go.
27:50The Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:52The theatre quarter and red light districts were here,
27:59the hostels for candidates for the civil service exams,
28:02and all tastes were catered for.
28:08Fortune tellers, ancient Chinese craft.
28:12Later, later.
28:19There were special funeral streets.
28:21One of them features in a famous Tang novel.
28:24I love all these pilgrimage knick-knacks.
28:26My family are really fed up with me bringing it back from London.
28:29It may seem hard to square all this control with an outward-looking age,
28:33but the Tang was a centralised state where everyone was registered in the censuses.
28:38Social harmony came from knowing and keeping your place.
28:45OK, here's the drum tower.
28:46Much later, of course, Ming dynasty,
28:48but there was a drum tower in the middle of Tang dynasty, Xi'an,
28:52beating the drum for the curfew.
28:54A very strictly regulated city.
28:57You couldn't be found outside your own ward at night, for example.
29:00So the 600 beats of the drum, you had to be back home.
29:16In the 7th century, the West Market was the Central Asian Quarter.
29:20Here were the Silk Road merchants, Uighurs and Persians,
29:24and they brought all their exotic foods with them.
29:27Cherries, barberries, apricots, peaches from Afghanistan.
29:34She's here.
29:39Oh, my God.
29:45I'm coming back there. Beautiful.
29:49She's here.
29:51Fizzing with energy, the capital city matched the ambitions of the Emperor Taizong himself.
30:03In this period, China changes from a feudal order to a bureaucratic state,
30:08with civil service exams.
30:10And the state becomes synonymous with Han Chinese civilisation.
30:17Which is why people today look on Taizong's reign as a golden age.
30:23I'm a great admirer of Li Shimin and Tang Taizong.
30:27He was like a lot of founding emperors.
30:30He was very ambitious, very ruthless, excellent administrator,
30:34and probably a bit of a control freak.
30:37He did a lot to establish the rule of China.
30:42It was Taizong who decided that the Silk Road should be brought under the umbrella of Chinese civilisation.
30:53Only a few years after Xuanzang made his journey west, Chinese armies marched in his footsteps.
31:01The Tang emperors sent their armies up the Silk Road here into Central Asia.
31:08They captured the great city of Gaocheng here in 642.
31:13And you could say that the modern idea of a greater China, including all these territories,
31:20can be traced back to that time and this place.
31:25The goal was to protect China's luxury trade with the West,
31:34but it was also political, to make China the great power of Asia.
31:41China was now at its biggest extent before the 18th century.
31:45It had become a continental civilisation,
31:48and will see itself that way from then until now.
31:55China was now at the same time.
32:00Driven by a thriving economy and a rising population,
32:04this is the time of the colonisation and development of the South,
32:08as China's centre of wealth and trade.
32:14The big story of the Tang dynasty, between the 600s and the 900s,
32:19is the shift to the South.
32:21At that time, Chinese official writes,
32:26every stream in the empire was full of ships,
32:29thousands, tens of thousands of great ships,
32:33moving constantly back and forth, always circulating,
32:37and if they stopped for a single moment,
32:4010,000 merchants would be bankrupted.
32:43It's the beginning of China as a commercial society,
32:47and the beginning of great trading cities.
32:51And none of them was more important than the one that grew up
32:54at the junction of the Grand Canal going north-south,
32:57and the Yangtze River going from the west to the east.
33:01The number one city of the Tang dynasty in trade, Yangzhou.
33:07If Xi'an was the centre of the imperial administration,
33:25Yangzhou was China's commercial heart.
33:29It's the beginning of the industrial South.
33:38You can still get a feel of the Tang in the core of old Yangzhou.
33:43And the key to the success of the city and to the rise of the South
33:47was one of China's great practical achievements, the Grand Canal.
34:00Built at the start of the 600s,
34:02the canal connected the north and the south
34:05with the river routes east and west.
34:10And it's still crucial to today's economy.
34:14Originally built 1,500 years ago,
34:18Xiaobo Lock today handles over 70 million tonnes a year.
34:23It's an amazing scene.
34:25It goes on all through the day, does it?
34:27Yes, 24 hours a day.
34:2924 hours a day?
34:30Yeah.
34:31Wow.
34:34It took 5 million men to build the first section in 605,
34:39eventually running north to a small place called Beijing.
34:44And it was built 1,000 years before the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
34:49Every different part of the log.
34:51On the up is number 3,
34:55and the middle is number 2,
34:57and the behind is number 1.
34:59Mainly carrying heavy material.
35:02Coal.
35:05Coal.
35:06And...
35:07Building material.
35:09Building material.
35:10China is building everywhere.
35:12Yeah.
35:13Fantastic.
35:21Just as today,
35:22such projects were only possible with a command economy.
35:27And with it, the Tang transformed China.
35:31In the 7th century, the economy boomed.
35:38The canal shipped 165,000 tonnes of grain each year,
35:44just to feed the new garrisons in the south.
35:48And standing at the intersection of China's waterways,
35:54Yangzhou became a new kind of city.
35:57It's the first sign of the beginning of the modern.
36:03The city never slept.
36:10It's probably the first large city in history
36:16to employ artificial lighting on a grand scale.
36:20Even the barge traffic on the Grand Canal
36:22was able to keep moving through the city till well after midnight.
36:26So Tang dynasty Yangzhou was always open for business.
36:33And so too, of course, was the entertainment industry.
36:38The taverns and music bars and the brothels.
36:42Described with delicate euphemisms in Tang dynasty poetry
36:47as Yangzhou's ten miles of summer breeze.
36:53In the 830s, it was all immortalised by the poet Du Mu
36:58in a tag which has hung around the city for all its ups and downs
37:02from that day to this.
37:04The Yangzhou dream.
37:17And as the south grew rich,
37:22they looked for new outlets for international trade,
37:26not only by land but by sea,
37:29all the way to the Persian Gulf.
37:32So here in the south, in the Tang dynasty,
37:36we've got the beginnings of what I suppose
37:39we can call the maritime Silk Road.
37:43Long-distance international trade organised by merchants
37:49here in cities like Twenzhou.
37:52And they're selling very top-end stuff,
37:55silks and fine cloths and exotic tableware.
37:59They're selling mass-produced ceramics
38:02designed with the Western consumer in mind.
38:05And they're also selling what will become
38:08the most popular drink in the world, tea.
38:13tea had begun in the south,
38:18on the subtropical hillsides of Yunnan.
38:21Originally drunk for health,
38:23by the Tang its use had spread everywhere
38:26and the first books had been published
38:28on its beneficial effects.
38:30It's never looked back.
38:36They exported silk too,
38:38coveted since Roman times by Westerners,
38:41who were prepared to pay jaw-dropping prices
38:45for garments fit for an emperor.
38:50You know, here is a dragon.
38:53It's a dragon.
38:55So you might think China's role today
38:58as a global mass producer is a new phenomenon
39:01in world history, but it's not.
39:04It's been estimated that Tang China had 55% of the world's GDP,
39:10with its vast internal market,
39:13from local village craftsmen and women
39:16to the imperial factories,
39:18and from everyday ceramics to gorgeous works of art.
39:23Tang China was a giant engine of growth.
39:34So let's view the early medieval world in a different way.
39:38Tang China was the superpower.
39:40They exported Confucian ideas, Buddhist religion,
39:45their written script and their language,
39:48adopted across East Asia and Japan.
39:52The Japanese even imitated Tang Xi'an
39:55in the architecture of their capital, Nara.
40:00China's influence on the East
40:02was as profound as Rome in the Latin West.
40:06In the East, in the 7th century,
40:08all roads led to Xi'an.
40:12And if you want a symbol of the age,
40:14just outside Xi'an stand the statues of 108 ambassadors
40:19from Central Asia to Japan and Vietnam to Persia,
40:25the diplomatic pecking order of the Tang Foreign Office.
40:30This was the time when China went out to the world
40:35and the world came here to China.
41:01And Islam also came to China in the Tang.
41:05Peacefully, which was not always the case in history.
41:11We believe during the Prophet Muhammad's time,
41:14peace beyond him, encourage our ancestors
41:16to learn science and technology,
41:18they do better in China.
41:20Seek knowledge as far as China.
41:22It had been the year Xuanzang arrived in India
41:25that the Prophet had died in Arabia,
41:27telling his followers to seek knowledge as far as China.
41:31Today, we speak Chinese Mandarin and local dialect,
41:40but in history, we speak Chinese,
41:42RBR, Pharisee, Mongolian.
41:44For a language, sometimes.
41:53And this time, Tang Dynasty, China was the centre of the world.
41:58Xi'an was the centre of the world, I suppose.
42:00Yeah.
42:01Superpower.
42:02To welcome an alien religion would hardly have been possible in the West
42:14or the Islamic world before modern times.
42:17It shows that while the Chinese believed in the superiority of their civilisation,
42:24they also knew there were many paths to enlightenment.
42:29That all knowledge was useful in understanding the cosmos
42:35and the position of humanity in it.
42:42And that idea is expressed in one of the most astonishing monuments
42:47in the whole of Chinese history.
42:51It's a stone inscription recording the coming of Christianity to China
42:56as far back as the 630s.
43:00Well, it's one of China's great national treasures,
43:03one of the select list of the A-list monuments
43:07that can never leave the country.
43:09And as an account of the interaction of civilisations,
43:12it's really hard to beat.
43:13Let's start at the top.
43:15Those nine characters say a monument commemorating
43:19the propagation of the luminous religion of the West,
43:23that is Christianity.
43:25In 635, it says, a wise man from the West,
43:33perhaps from Persia, called Rabban Abraha,
43:37decided to bring the Christian scriptures to China.
43:40Observing the path of the winds through great perils,
43:44he made his way all the way to China,
43:46presumably on the Silk Route,
43:48and arrived here in Shang'an.
43:50The emperor, it says, received him here in Shang'an,
43:53and the Christian scriptures were translated in the imperial library,
43:57and then the emperor considered them in his private apartments,
44:00and was deeply convinced by their truthfulness,
44:04and issued this proclamation in 638.
44:08The way for humanity, at different times and different places,
44:16did not have the same name.
44:19And the great sage, at different times and different places,
44:23was not in the same human body.
44:26Over history, heaven ordained that true religion
44:30would be established in different countries and different climates,
44:34so that all of humanity could be saved.
44:37And we've considered the Christian scriptures,
44:41and have decided that in all their essentials,
44:44they are about the core values of humanity,
44:48and we have decreed that they would be propagated throughout the empire.
44:55But the story of China is one of cycles of creation and destruction.
45:01And in the next century, the empire faced a perfect storm of crises.
45:12It began out in the west.
45:16Battles against the expanding Muslim Caliphate,
45:20savage internal rebellions,
45:22reported by one of the great Tang poets, Li Bai.
45:27Last year, says Li Bai,
45:30we were fighting out to the north beyond the Great Wall.
45:33And this year, we're fighting far out in the west,
45:37on the Kashgar River.
45:39We've washed our blades in the streams of Parthia,
45:43and grazed our horses amid the snows of Tianshan.
45:48There it is. There's Tianshan.
45:50What a place to imagine it, here in Zhao He.
45:53Tang Dynasty garrison town,
45:56with its watch tower and its beacon platform.
45:59But, says Li Bai,
46:01the beacon fires are always burning.
46:04The marching and the fighting never stops,
46:06and nor does the dying.
46:08You should know that the sword is a cursed thing,
46:11that the wise man uses only if he must.
46:26Out in these vast expanses,
46:28the Tang Empire was overstretched.
46:31And in the end, they abandoned the west.
46:42China would only regain it in the 18th century.
46:48The crisis came under the Emperor Xuanzong,
46:51the apocalyptic eight-year rebellion of General An Lushan,
46:56which saw the end of the Tang dream of a greater China.
47:01the city of Taufan.
47:02His family and children,
47:03the runtime of the town of Tuningian,
47:06the weakening of Aguntus,
47:08the dead body of Taufan's.
47:09The tradition of Taufan,
47:10the early two of the 70s,
47:11of a new civilization.
47:12The area of Taufan's.
47:13The sands find a nice place between the roots
47:14and the emergence of the Taufan.
47:16Theations of Taufan's.
47:18In the end, the mountain of the whole city of Taufan
47:20was one of the Tang近y to Fernando Vivian.
47:26Jupiter's.
47:27The oasis of Turfan was one of the Tang
47:31garrison towns out in the western deserts so when lee by writes his poem about fighting in the west
47:39it's this area he's talking about yes i think so yeah in about 755 because of the the rebellion of
47:48enlou shan and shesiming the central government became much weaker so the station troops were
47:54returned to inland china to fight against the the army of the enlou shan and shesiming an lushan yeah
48:01this was a very big shock yeah before lord yeah an lushan a bogeyman who chilled hearts back in xi'an
48:13far to the northeast he gathered armies to take revenge after the emperor had killed his son
48:18at home the dynasty had lost touch with the people the tombs of the 8th century royals near xi'an
48:29show their pastimes and pleasures and hunting and courtly parties oblivious to the gathering storm
48:36these wonderful images outside the tomb chamber they're um courtly ladies just attendants
48:49in their stylish fashions they could be uh fin de siècle paris couldn't they central asian fashions
48:56these are the the vogue in the early 700s
49:00the faces are so animated aren't they you can almost imagine their conversations the gossip
49:09of the rumors the courts that was seething with anxiety
49:18i'm afraid we chinese never managed to live more than 50 years without some terrible
49:22kind of cataclysmic event the cycles of chinese history that's right and it's been a particularly
49:29good period up until the emperor uh the brilliant emperor began allegedly to have to love his
49:36concubine uh yang guifei the precious concubine too much and he left quite a lot of the the work of
49:45governing the country to various people especially to this concubine's family and song which was absolutely
49:51disastrous the story goes that the emperor sent his men over the land to find the most beautiful woman
49:58in china they failed of course but then when he was bathing here in the hot springs he saw the 18 year
50:08old daughter of a high official
50:14the warm water running down her glistening jade-like body as the poet bai ju yi tells the story
50:21the emperor had dreamed of a beauty who could topple an empire
50:30meanwhile a girl in the young family came of age
50:36and when she smiled she could melt the heart with a single glance
50:40and from that day the emperor missed every morning court
50:49but then one day the ground was shaken by the war drums of a revolt
50:54and lushan came in with his tibetans went straight to changan soldiers carried the emperor and his
51:04favorites out of uh the the the capital overnight they it was it was so desperate an emergency but
51:11when they got into the hills because he was making for sechuan which was hilly and where he thought he
51:16would be safe um his bodyguards a small group of people rebelled and said they were not going any
51:24further as long as the emperor had this favorite and favorites with him and the favorites had to be slaughtered
51:37among them was the lady young strung up on a tree on a silk cord
51:46the great rebellion of the andushan period was extremely hard on china
51:56an enormous number of people were killed or displaced
52:03and we know that the census were taken before that happened and afterward 35 million people were
52:09missing as government broke down eight years of horror unfolded
52:16it was a national catastrophe described by china's greatest poet dufu in lines remembered ever since
52:24by the chinese people in times of trouble
52:27it was just two words it means the state has been demolished and it doesn't exist anymore there's no
52:45state left but shan herzai the mountains the river still remain
52:48in all the 3 000 years of chinese poetry the world's oldest living poetic tradition
52:59it's dufu the poet of this terrible time who is their most loved because he spoke in the people's voice
53:07he's still part of the school syllabus today so every chinese child knows how the tongue fell
53:18hi hello not from their history class but from poetry oh very good you speak english
53:24wonderful wonderful and here at the secondary school in yanshu outside loyang they've an extra
53:30reason to know all about it this is the tomb here yes because dufu's grave is in the school grounds
53:39he wasn't famous when he died the inscription says
53:45the tomb of mr du government deputy irrigation inspector
53:49wonderful wonderful wonderful as the tongue world collapsed one last brief poem by dufu
54:07tells how he met again south of the river a famous musician once high in the king's favor
54:14请欣赫八三八代的节目
54:20江南冯里归年,杜申
54:26岐王翟丽,咸谳츄尘常见
54:31崔九堂乾記肚瑜
54:36正是江南,浩方靜
54:41I know Chi Wang, who is the prince of the Qi, Qi Wang, and does anybody know, is he
55:08a big, important person?
55:15He's the brother of the emperor, Xuanzong.
55:18Great.
55:19So, very important man then.
55:21Du Fu is recalling the palace of Qi Wang.
55:26Now, this phrase here,
55:29which you read beautifully, if I may say so.
55:37It was very, very good.
55:39And then this line here is so fantastic.
55:42Don't laugh at me.
55:44The falling flowers time season is here again, and in this time, I meet you again.
55:56The falling flowers, in Chinese poetry, can you explain to me what this means?
56:02Anybody?
56:03I think it means, you know, the flowers are falling down, and a period of the season
56:09is gone.
56:10And it also means the Tang dynasty is gone.
56:13And in the same time, he meets his old friend, and the old memories, the beautiful memories
56:20are back, and he feels very sad.
56:23So, falling flowers is not just blossom falling, it's a feeling of melancholy in the heart.
56:28And the Tang dynasty is falling, there is a mood of autumn and sadness, and he meets
56:36the man who was once this great figure.
56:39Such a simple poem, isn't it?
56:40Just four lines, and yet it's full, full of fantastic ideas.
56:45Thank you for being patient.
56:48To you.
56:53So the state was broken, but the landscape survived, and so did the people.
57:13It's a very high-class social media piece here.
57:18The ninth century was a time of famines and more rebellions.
57:23In the end, the Tang lose their nerve and start to look inwards.
57:30In the 840s, they even launch a persecution of Buddhism, now a symbol of un-Chinese ideas.
57:38And so, the mandate of heaven was lost.
57:41But as the Buddha had said, and the Chinese have always known too well, all things must pass.
57:48On the 1st of June, 907, the last Tang emperor abdicated, bringing to an end an age of amazing creativity.
58:03An age by which the Chinese still define themselves today.
58:09A time in which Xi'an here rivalled and then surpassed Baghdad and Constantinople as a city of the world.
58:18For a time, China will plunge into anarchy.
58:23But a new age of greatness will soon arise.
58:27As in China, it always has.
58:30Well, the story continues next Thursday at 9 here on BBC Two.
58:42But next, F1 driver Felipe Massa and the Williams team boss Claire Williams join the Claire Balding Show.
58:48No.
58:59No.
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