Trade Items From China Art From the Tang Dynastyt

Learning Objective

• Describe how the Tang dynasty prospered from trade

Key Points

• Although the Silk Road from China to the West was initially formulated during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (141–87 BCE), it was reopened by the Tang Empire in 639 CE when Hou Junji conquered the West, and remained open for almost four decades.
• The Silk Route was the most important pre-modern Eurasian trade road, opening long-distance political and economic relations between the civilizations.
• Though silk was certainly the major trade particular exported from China, many other goods were traded, and religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies, equally well as diseases, likewise spread along the Silk Road.
• In addition to economical trade, the Silk Road served every bit a means of carrying out cultural merchandise amidst the civilizations along its network.
• Chinese maritime presence increased dramatically during the Tang menses, giving rise to large seaports and trade relations with Africa, Republic of india, and beyond.

Terms

Pax Sinica

A period of peace in Eastern asia, maintained by Chinese hegemony, during which long-distance trade flourished, cities ballooned, standards of living rose, and the population surged.

Silk Route

An ancient network of trade routes that for centuries were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting the West and East from People's republic of china to the Mediterranean Sea.

Overview

Through use of state trade along the Silk Route and maritime trade by sail at sea, the Tang were able to gain many new technologies, cultural practices, rare luxuries, and contemporary items. From the Heart East, India, Persia, and Central Asia the Tang were able to acquire new ideas in mode, new types of ceramics, and improved silver-smithing. The Chinese also gradually adopted the foreign concept of stools and chairs as seating, whereas earlier they had ever sat on mats placed on the floor. In the Middle East, the Islamic world coveted and purchased in bulk Chinese goods such every bit silks, lacquerwares, and porcelain wares. Songs, dances, and musical instruments from foreign regions became popular in China during the Tang dynasty. These musical instruments included oboes, flutes, and minor lacquered drums from Kucha in the Tarim Basin, and percussion instruments from India such as cymbals. At the court there were 9 musical ensembles (expanded from seven in the Sui dynasty) representing music from throughout Asia.

There was great contact with and interest in India as a hub for Buddhist knowledge, with famous travelers such as Xuanzang (d. 664) visiting the Due south Asian subcontinent. Later a seventeen-yr-long trip, Xuanzang managed to bring dorsum valuable Sanskrit texts to be translated into Chinese. There was as well a Turkic–Chinese dictionary available for serious scholars and students, and Turkic folksongs gave inspiration to some Chinese poetry. In the interior of China, trade was facilitated by the Grand Culvert and the Tang government's rationalization of the greater canal organisation that reduced costs of transporting grain and other commodities. The state as well managed roughly 32,100 km (19,900 mi) of postal service routes by equus caballus and boat.

The Silk Road

Although the Silk Road from China to the West was initially formulated during the reign of Emperor Wu (141–87 BCE) during the Han dynasty, it was reopened by the Tang in 639 CE when Hou Junji (d. 643) conquered the West, and remained open for almost 4 decades. It was closed later the Tibetans captured it in 678, just in 699, during Empress Wu's catamenia, information technology reopened when the Tang reconquered the Four Garrisons of Anxi originally installed in 640, once again connecting China direct to the West for land-based trade.

The Silk Route was the most of import pre-modernistic Eurasian trade road. The Tang dynasty established a second Pax Sinica and the Silk Road reached its golden age, whereby Persian and Sogdian merchants benefited from the commerce betwixt East and W. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, the Chinese empire welcomed foreign cultures, making it very cosmopolitan in its urban centers.

The Tang captured the vital route through the Gilgit Valley from Tibet in 722, lost information technology to the Tibetans in 737, and regained it under the command of the Goguryeo-Korean General Gao Xianzhi. When the An Lushan Rebellion ended in 763, the Tang Empire had once again lost control over its western lands, as the Tibetan Empire largely cut off China'due south direct admission to the Silk Road. An internal rebellion in 848 ousted the Tibetan rulers, and Tang China regained its northwestern prefectures from Tibet in 851. These lands independent crucial grazing areas and pastures for raising horses that the Tang dynasty desperately needed.

Despite the many western travelers coming into Mainland china to live and trade, many travelers, mainly religious monks, recorded the strict border laws that the Chinese enforced. Equally the monk Xuanzang and many other monk travelers attested to, there were many Chinese government checkpoints along the Silk Road where travel permits into the Tang Empire were examined. Furthermore, banditry was a problem along the checkpoints and haven towns, as Xuanzang also recorded that his group of travelers was assaulted by bandits on multiple occasions.

The Silk Route too affected Tang dynasty fine art. Horses became a significant symbol of prosperity and power equally well as an instrument of armed services and diplomatic policy. Horses were as well revered every bit a relative of the dragon.

Tang flow jar. A Tang period gilt-silver jar, shaped in the style of northern nomad's leather bag, busy with a horse dancing with a cup of wine in its mouth, as the horses of Emperor Xuanzong were trained to exercise.

Seaports and Maritime Merchandise

Chinese envoys had been sailing through the Indian Ocean to India since perhaps the 2nd century BC, simply it was during the Tang dynasty that a strong Chinese maritime presence was establish in the Persian Gulf and Crimson Sea, into Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, Aksum (Ethiopia), and Somalia in the Horn of Africa.

During the Tang dynasty, thousands of foreigners came and lived in numerous Chinese cities for trade and commercial ties with China, including Persians, Arabs, Hindu Indians, Malays, Bengalis, Sinhalese, Khmers, Chams, Jews and Nestorian Christians of the Near East, and many others. In 748, the Buddhist monk Jian Zhen described Guangzhou as a bustling mercantile middle where many large and impressive foreign ships came to dock.

During the An Lushan Rebellion Arab and Persian pirates burned and looted Guangzhou in 758, and foreigners were massacred at Yangzhou in 760. The Tang government reacted by shutting the port of Canton down for roughly v decades, and foreign vessels docked at Hanoi instead. However, when the port reopened it thrived. In 851 the Arab merchant Sulaiman al-Tajir observed the manufacturing of Chinese porcelain in Guangzhou and admired its transparent quality. He likewise provided a description of Guangzhou'due south mosque, its granaries, its local regime assistants, some of its written records, and the treatment of travelers, along with the use of ceramics, rice-vino, and tea. All the same, in another bloody episode at Guangzhou in 879, the Chinese rebel Huang Chao sacked the urban center and purportedly slaughtered thousands of native Chinese, along with foreign Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Muslims in the process. Huang'south rebellion was eventually suppressed in 884.

The Chinese engaged in large-scale production for overseas export past at least the time of the Tang. This was proven by the discovery of the Belitung shipwreck, a silt-preserved shipwrecked Arabian dhow in the Gaspar Strait near Belitung, which independent 63,000 pieces of Tang ceramics, silver, and gold. Commencement in 785, the Chinese began to call regularly at Sufala on the East African coast in guild to cut out Arab middlemen, with various contemporary Chinese sources giving detailed descriptions of trade in Africa. In 863 the Chinese writer Duan Chengshi (d. 863) provided a detailed description of the slave trade, ivory trade, and ambergris merchandise in a state called Bobali, which historians suggest was Berbera in Somalia. In Fustat (old Cairo), Arab republic of egypt, the fame of Chinese ceramics there led to an enormous need for Chinese goods; hence Chinese often traveled there. During this time menstruum, the Arab merchant Shulama wrote of his admiration for Chinese seafaring junks, but noted that their draft was too deep for them to enter the Euphrates River, which forced them to ferry passengers and cargo in small boats. Shulama also noted that Chinese ships were oftentimes very large, with capacities of up to 600–700 passengers.

Foreign merchant. Figurine of a Sogdian merchant of the Tang dynasty, 7th-century.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/trade-under-the-tang-dynasty/

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