The Era of Division 39
abundant rainfall and the many streams and tributaries of the Yangzi
River, to become China’s richest rice-producing region. The many rivers
and tributaries in central and south China made transportation more
effi cient and long-distance trade more feasible than in the north.
In addition, wealthy families in the Yangzi Valley, sometimes with
government subsidies, could afford the long-term investment required
for mulberry trees, necessary for the production of silk. Silk worms are
so tiny at hatching that there are 700,000 in a pound. In fi ve weeks,
these worms will eat twelve tons of mulberry leaves and will themselves
grow to a combined weight of fi ve tons. Each worm, about four or fi ve
inches long at maturity, then spins a cocoon of a silk thread about one
mile in length and as fi ne as a spider’s web. The production of silk is
incredibly labor intensive, as each cocoon must be carefully softened in
scalding water and unwound onto a spool. Several of these fi ne threads
are spun together to make a strong silk thread, which is only then ready
to weave into cloth. The fi ve tons of silk cocoons will, after painstaking
processing, produce only about 150 pounds of fi nished silk cloth.
In this era of political division and internal weakness, long-distance
trade fl ourished as never before, and silk was a major driving force in
this development. Merchants brought gold, silver, and luxury goods—
such as textiles from Persia and pearls, ivory, incense, and coral from
South and Southeast Asia—to trade for the coveted Chinese silks, as
well as bronze objects and lacquerware. Guangzhou on the far southeast
coast became a thriving center of international trade, and by the early
sixth century, the capital of the Southern Liang dynasty, Jiankang, on the
Yangzi River in central China, was the largest and most luxurious city in
the world, with a population of one million.
In contrast to northern cities, which were divided by the govern-
ment into discrete rectangular administrative units to confi ne markets
to particular areas, Jiankang had markets scattered throughout the city
so that commerce permeated urban life. The Yangzi and its many trib-
utaries afforded the economical movement of goods to and from the
southwestern interior and in the other direction, to the eastern coast.
Consequently, Jiankang was a major center of trading networks that
extended westward as far as Sichuan and Tibet and eastward down the
southeast China coast to Southeast and South Asia. From there, with
the help of Indian and Muslim traders, Chinese goods found their way
westward as far as Syria and Rome.^2 As a result of all these profound
economic changes, the reconstructed empire that ended the era of divi-
sion in 589 was a far more prosperous country with a far more devel-
oped economy than anything that existed in Han times.