T
he half century between the Tang and Song dynasties is known as
the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, in reference
to fi ve short-lived regimes in the north and ten minor kingdoms
competing in the south during these years. Chang’an and Luoyang, the
two Tang centers of power, were devastated in the civil wars that fi n-
ished off the Tang, and the city of Kaifeng, at the mouth of the Grand
Canal and three hundred miles closer to the grain-producing regions of
south China, became the center of competition among the generals of
the north. In 960, General Zhao Kuangyin seized control of Kaifeng
and proclaimed a new dynasty, the Song (pronounced Soong).
Zhao Kuangyin, known to history by his reign title of Song Taizu,
was one of the pivotal emperors in Chinese history because he created
a more centralized state than ever before. From 960 to his death in
976, he conquered the south and brought the best troops in the empire
under his own direct control to protect the capital. He persuaded his
most powerful generals to retire with generous stipends, and he placed
their armies in outlying areas under the direct control of his own civil
bureaucrats. Many of the powerful aristocratic families of the Tang era
were killed or greatly weakened in the civil wars that ended the Tang,
and so the Song emperors had far fewer rivals for power than their
Tang predecessors. In the Song dynasty, civil bureaucrats were much
more likely to become government offi cials through competing in the
civil service examination system rather than through blood ties to other
offi cials.
In the Song period, China came closer than ever before or since to
achieving the Confucian ideal of a central bureaucratic state ruled by
the emperor with the advice and management of civil bureaucrats who
chapter 5