78 China in World History
manufacturing of iron weapons in great quantities. In 1084, the court
sent to one army on its northwestern frontier 35,000 swords, 8,000
shields, 10,000 spears, and a million arrowheads, all made of iron.
As agriculture became more specialized and interregional trade
expanded, the government began in the early Song to allow a few mer-
chants to issue paper certifi cates for cash deposits in one city that could
be redeemed for cash in another city, greatly increasing the convenience
of long-distance trade. In the early twelfth century, the government took
over the printing and issuing of these certifi cates, creating the world’s fi rst
paper money. Song merchants organized guilds, formed partnerships, and
raised money by selling stocks in their enterprises. The thriving agricul-
tural and commercial economies of Song times can also be seen in thou-
sands of Song-era contracts that survive, including tomb contracts that
were drawn up to apply in both the world of the living and the dead.
The Song capitals of Kaifeng and Hangzhou functioned as com-
mercial centers far more than had the Tang cities of Chang’an or Luoy-
ang. Before it fell to the Jin invaders in 1127, Kaifeng was the largest
city in the world, with perhaps one million inhabitants. After the fall
of Kaifeng, the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou became an equally
thriving center of trade and entertainment. A guide to Hangzhou writ-
ten in 1235 describes its markets for every kind of commodity, artisans’
workshops, teahouses, inns, wineshops, restaurants, professional ban-
quet caterers, every kind of entertainment, including trained bears and
insects, as well as public and private gardens, and many volunteer orga-
nizations of people with hobbies such as music, physical fi tness, exotic
foods, and antique collecting—and the list went on and on.
Song prosperity also stimulated international trade, particularly
along the southeast coast, where Arab Muslim merchants operated
huge Chinese-made ships with watertight compartments and used the
Chinese invention of the compass to facilitate a thriving long-distance
trade between China, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean. By the
early twelfth century, Quanzhou, a coastal city in southern Fujian, had
half a million residents. The general prosperity of Song times can also
be seen in population growth. Scholars now estimate that China’s popu-
lation grew from perhaps 70 million in 750 to about 100 million in
1100 and perhaps 110 million (including the Southern Song and the Jin
state in the north) by 1200, a rate of population growth the world had
never seen before.
Refl ecting the prosperity of these years, Chinese silks, lacquerware,
and porcelains reached their highest level of technical refi nement in the
Song. By the late Tang, Chinese craftsmen had perfected the production of