Reunified Empires 65
their camels. Music from Central Asia also became popular in China
and transformed Chinese popular musical tastes and styles. The pipa, a
four-stringed lute originally from Persia, became a popular instrument
in China during the Tang and has remained so ever since.
For several reasons, the Tang period was marked by an openness to
foreign infl uences that has seldom been seen in China before or since.
The imperial family of the Tang had long intermingled and intermar-
ried with nomadic peoples of the northwest. Many foreign infl uences
came to China with the unprecedented popularity of Buddhism during
the Tang. And by extending Chinese power and infl uence into Central
Asia, the Tang Empire greatly facilitated the fl ourishing trade of the Silk
Roads. As the most powerful, prosperous, and creative civilization in
the world in its own time, the Tang dynasty has ever since been a source
This glazed terracotta funerary statue of a Central Asian caravaneer with his
loaded camel was found in a Tang tomb. So popular was the Silk Road trade in
Tang times that these ceramic camels with their “barbarian” caravaneers were
frequently buried in the tombs of offi cials and royal families, in order to continue
the supply of exotic goods from the far west to the ancestral souls of Tang
aristocrats in the next world. Bridegman-Giraudon / Art Resource, NY