Tang Dynasty

• After the Sui Dynasty broke down, another general unifies China. His son tells him to step down and kills his brothers to gain power. He is known as a political reformer, a successful general, and a patron for the arts.
• The Tang Dynasty emphasized on expansion. They used junk boats, protected Silk Road, and sailed the Indian Ocean. Because of the enormous expansions, there was also a lot of cultural diffusion with Islamic culture. They received tribute from Vietnam and Korea.
• Vietnam gave China champa rice. With this crop, there are now two harvests a year. The food supply doubled with the same amount of space given. Woo-hoo.
• There’s an expansion of bureaucracy. The dynasty tries to distribute some land and power to everybody. Created paper and Flying money. Flying money is an early form of a credit card.
• Officials are selected from examinations that require knowledge of Confucian ideas. Students are given three days in a jail cell to take a test that is given once a year. This gives people some social nobility. However, the education is expensive and time consuming, thus; only middle class people have the chance to pass the exam.
• There is constant conflict between Buddhism and Confucianism. At one point, Empress Wu set Buddhism as the official religion. However, as Buddhism grew, people saw is as a threat to Confucian ideas and attacked the religion. Confucianism won but Buddhism didn’t go away.
• Anyway, the Tang Dynasty imploded like the Sui Dynasty. They spent too much money on expansion. Islamic expansionists and Tibetan attacks weakened the empire. Also, the empire became too large to govern. The thing that really ended it was the murder of an infant emperor, and as an infant, there are no heirs. Thus, fighting breaks out, yadda yadda, and chaos reigns. Ha ha suckers.