Reunified Empires 63
Despite its inglorious end, the Tang period as a whole has long
been regarded as one of the truly great ages in Chinese history. By 700,
Chang’an was the largest city in the world, with nearly two million
people. It served as a magnet for merchants, diplomats, and religious
pilgrims from all over Asia. In its political organization, economic pros-
perity and cultural sophistication, the Tang dynasty in the early eighth
century was the world’s greatest empire. In contrast to Europe, where
Justinian in the sixth century and Charlemagne in 800 had tried but
failed to match the size and scope of the Roman Empire, Tang China
easily surpassed the great Han dynasty in its size, degree of central con-
trol, prosperity, and cultural sophistication. In varying degrees, Japan,
Korea, and Vietnam all drew direct inspiration from the Tang Empire,
including its capital city, its Confucian political philosophy, its schools of
Buddhism, its art and architecture, its medical traditions, and its classi-
cal Chinese language. In 640, eight thousand Koreans were in Chang’an
trying to absorb as much of China’s culture as they could. Japan in the
eighth century reformed its government and built its permanent capital
in Kyoto, directly modeled on the example of Chang’an.
The one art form most identifi ed with the Tang dynasty is poetry,
which is seen in Chinese culture as the most honest and revealing way to
express one’s true feelings. At dinners and banquets the hosts and guests
exchanged clever poems on the occasion. Men traded fl irtatious poems
with educated prostitutes or courtesans as part of the “courting” pro-
cess, which might or might not result in a “sale.” People recorded their
daily activities in poems, wrote letters in poems, described great historic
events or scenes of natural beauty in poems, and commemorated their
departures from friends with tearful poems.
The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty, a compilation made in
the early eighteenth century, contains 48,900 poems from 2,200 Tang
poets. Ever since Tang times, all educated Chinese have been expected
to be able to write, read, and appreciate poetry. Every young man who
studied for the civil service examinations fi rst learned poetry by memo-
rizingThree Hundred Tang Poems, a book that includes samples from
all the great Tang poets.
Most critics have agreed that the two greatest poets in Chinese his-
tory were the Tang poets Li Bo and Du Fu, who are sometimes seen as
theyin and yang of Chinese poetry, or the Daoist and Confucian sides
of the Chinese psyche. Such labels are oversimplifi ed, but they capture
something of the contrast between these two great men. Li Bo deliber-
ately cultivated the self-image of a carefree genius who dashed off bril-
liant poems without any effort at all. He casually broke all the rules of