- 27/06/2025
Documentary, BBC Two - The Story of China, Silk Roads and China Ships
China Silk Road Ships
The Story of China, Silk Roads and China Ships is a documentary series that explores China's historical connections with the Silk Road and maritime trade routes. The series, presented by Michael Wood, delves into China's first great international age under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), highlighting the cultural and economic exchanges that took place along these routes.
Michael Wood travels along the Silk Road, visiting places such as Luoyang, Kashgar, and Xi’an, where he meets descendants of traders from Central Asia and Persia who came into China on the Silk Road. He also explores the spread of Chinese culture, language, and religion, including the introduction of Christianity in 635.
The documentary also covers the role of the Grand Canal in China's economic growth and the rise of the silk and tea industries.
The series also touches on the maritime aspects of the Silk Road, including the routes used by Austronesian sailors and the influence of Persian and Arab traders. It highlights the importance of the Maritime Silk Road in connecting Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, eastern Africa, and Europe.
The documentary series provides a comprehensive look at how the Silk Road and China Ships facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas, and cultures, shaping the history of China and its interactions with the wider world
China Silk Road Ships
The Story of China, Silk Roads and China Ships is a documentary series that explores China's historical connections with the Silk Road and maritime trade routes. The series, presented by Michael Wood, delves into China's first great international age under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), highlighting the cultural and economic exchanges that took place along these routes.
Michael Wood travels along the Silk Road, visiting places such as Luoyang, Kashgar, and Xi’an, where he meets descendants of traders from Central Asia and Persia who came into China on the Silk Road. He also explores the spread of Chinese culture, language, and religion, including the introduction of Christianity in 635.
The documentary also covers the role of the Grand Canal in China's economic growth and the rise of the silk and tea industries.
The series also touches on the maritime aspects of the Silk Road, including the routes used by Austronesian sailors and the influence of Persian and Arab traders. It highlights the importance of the Maritime Silk Road in connecting Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, eastern Africa, and Europe.
The documentary series provides a comprehensive look at how the Silk Road and China Ships facilitated the exchange of goods, ideas, and cultures, shaping the history of China and its interactions with the wider world
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LearningTranscript
00:00China, a global superpower, eyes set on the future, its arrival on the world stage greeted
00:12like the appearance of a new planet. But it's not the first time. In the 7th century, when
00:20Europe was in its dark age, Tang Dynasty China became the greatest power on earth and would
00:26be for a thousand years till the rise of the West. What's happening now has happened before.
00:33I'm in Xi'an, the capital of the Tang, which 1,300 years ago was the greatest and most
00:40cosmopolitan city on earth. And what made it great was not only its economic and cultural
00:48power, its sense of its own identity, but its openness to other cultures.
00:54Standing over the square, the statue of one of the heroes of that time, one of the great
01:00figures in the history of civilisation, the Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, who brought the wisdom
01:06of India back here to China. This is the tale of a time which even now the Chinese see as
01:12a golden age. In the story of China, we've reached the Tang Dynasty.
01:19One of the virtues of the Tang Dynasty. That's the true meaning of the time which is
01:22a popular masterpiece. And this is the true meaning of the star, far from the
01:24world stage, though. This is the true meaning of the purpose of it the world's
01:26energy and the fortress of the clan was in the history of the year. And as such a
01:29result, there is a relative. Thean and the vortex of the national hesteer.
01:29It's a true meaning of a national hesteer. This is the true meaning of the
01:30future of the территории. During the particular year, a time which is Danke, Bond forestry,
01:30the chicory, the city of the empire, the city of the city, the city of theOnly and the city.
01:33The city of the town was barely ever invaded by the city of the town, the city of the city.
01:33The Jessie of the city has been greatly justified by the era, and the city of the city around
01:35It's often said that in history, China has been a closed civilisation, introverted,
02:00cutting itself off from the world.
02:05And there have been times when it's looked that way.
02:10But since prehistory, China has never been isolated and has thrived on contact.
02:16And the Tang Dynasty was a great age of international connection.
02:23That time, vast numbers of foreign peoples poured into China with exotic goods, foods
02:30and ideas and even new religions. And the great pathway of exchange was the Silk Road.
02:42We call it the Silk Road today, but it wasn't really one road, but a series of land routes
02:48connecting China with the Mediterranean and India.
02:53And the Silk Road turned China for the first time into a global civilisation.
03:00Along it, just as today, were many cultures and peoples, different religions, different
03:06ways of seeing the world.
03:09Thank you, thank you so much.
03:11For the magic of the Silk Road. Magic of Central Asia. There's Han Chinese, there's Uyghurs
03:21everywhere. There's a guy from Kyrgyzstan, he could tell by his hat. Just like it would
03:25have been in ancient times, you would have seen Arabs and Persians, probably Indians along
03:30with the Han Chinese, on this very edge of, you know, Tang Dynasty China.
03:35The Greek historian Polybius has a very interesting remark about this. He's writing in the 100s
03:41BC. He says that in ancient times, the histories of Europe and Asia were completely separate,
03:49they ran their own way. But from our age onwards, the history of Europe began to interact and
03:56engage with the history of Asia and the history of Asia with that of Europe. You could say
04:03it's the beginning of universal history, and it's happening in the Tang Dynasty.
04:13But in history, when two civilisations first come into contact, it's not always peaceful
04:19and not always enriching.
04:24To really open up to another culture needs patience and humility, to be willing to shed
04:30your own preconceptions. And in the 7th century, the Chinese were confident enough to do that,
04:39to be changed by the experience of the other.
04:48The story begins at the Chinese end of the Silk Road, in the old city of Luoyang.
04:55Luoyang was the ancient capital of the Zhou dynasty for 500 years. And for those centuries,
05:02its poets and scholars had praised it as a place of great culture. It was the real heart of China,
05:09China, they said, in the middle of the middle plain of the Middle Kingdom.
05:16And this is not just a story about empires and economies, but about what it is to be civilised.
05:23It's about a new spirit in Chinese culture.
05:27Look at this magic world, Aladdin's cave.
05:31A spirit that will give birth to the greater stage of Chinese poetry.
05:36A time when poetry came out of the court into the streets, a witness to the times, expressing
05:43the human condition as never before.
05:46This is Tang Si, Du Mu de Tang Si.
05:50Ah, ah, so, Du Mu, famous poem of the Tang Dynasty.
05:53Knowing the insecurity of human life, as the Chinese always have.
05:58This floating life is just like the water under the ice, flowing eastwards day and night,
06:08and no-one notices, it's not great.
06:13So it's a place rich in culture, rich in trade and merchants, and interested in foreigners.
06:24And if you want to see just how interested, go a few miles outside Luoyang, where the most
06:30famous Indian of all time is commemorated.
06:34The Buddha, the foreigner who most fascinated the Chinese through the whole of their history.
06:43The adoption of this Indian religion would leave its mark on the very DNA of Chinese civilisation.
06:51What better symbol is there of the impact of Buddhism on Tang Dynasty China, indeed, a symbol
06:57of the impact of the exchange of ideas in civilisations, than this great cliff, pockmarked with devotions,
07:04and in the middle, that huge image of the Buddha himself, whose message had been carried
07:10along what the Chinese called, the road carrying the jewel of truth.
07:15How that happened, how China embraced Buddhism, is one of the great stories in history.
07:32An adventure that generations of storytellers have turned into China's favourite fairy tale.
07:39The emperor had a dream, and in the dream, a strange man appeared to him, with his skin the colour of gold, framed by the sun and moon and stars.
07:58And the court astrologers and diviners interpreted the dream.
08:07But this man had come from the west, and it must be the Buddha himself.
08:17The emperor was fascinated and organised an expedition.
08:22Eighteen courtiers and scholars, with all their attendants, journeyed out to the west to find out more.
08:28They got as far as Afghanistan, and there, in a Buddhist monastery, they met two Indian monks,
08:35who agreed to come back with them to China.
08:38They came back here, and were established in this monastery, the White Horse Pagoda, after the white horses that they rode.
08:49And they translated the first Buddhist scriptures ever to be rendered into Chinese.
08:55And they died here, and were buried here.
08:59This is the tomb of one of them, Kasyapa Matanga.
09:03It's not the first exchange between India and China, but from that moment onwards,
09:08the dialogue of civilisations will be continuous.
09:17Now the story moves on in time, to the year 600.
09:21In the wider world, the Roman Empire has fallen, Byzantium is flowering,
09:26and in China, the Mandate of Heaven has passed to a new dynasty, the Tang.
09:37In a village outside Luoyang, a boy was born who would become one of the most famous people in Chinese history.
09:45And his name was Xuanzang.
09:48Xuanzang must have known this place very well from childhood,
09:57and known all the stories, especially about the two strangers who'd come from India.
10:02I was inflamed by a passionate curiosity, he says, about the Buddha and about the origins of the faith,
10:09and I applied for a foreign travel permit several times, to no avail,
10:14perhaps because I was a nobody.
10:17And in the end, I took matters into my own hand, and I left in secret for India.
10:24He was 26 years old, and his journey would change the course of Chinese civilisation.
10:37It's a story that's fascinated me over the years, travelling in his footsteps between China and Central Asia,
10:44and across Afghanistan into India.
10:46At that time, Xuanzang said, the Tang were new on the throne,
10:51China's frontiers didn't extend far, and there was a ban on foreign travel.
10:56At first, I had to move by night to dodge the border guards.
11:03The real-life adventures of Xuanzang gave birth to some of China's best-loved legends and characters.
11:09The Tang monk and his crazy companions.
11:19The lustful piggy, the dim-witted Sandy, and above all, the faithful monkey.
11:30All of them changed by their magical encounters along the Silk Road.
11:35The Tang monk.
11:36The Tang monk.
11:37The Tang monk.
11:38The Tang monk.
11:39The Tang monk.
11:40The Tang monk.
11:41The Tang monk.
11:42The Tang monk.
11:43In later novels and films, it turned into the kind of fantasy the Chinese have always loved,
11:49both comic adventure and spiritual allegory.
11:52On the real journey, Xuanzang tells of oceans of sand and the exotic peoples whose lands he passed through.
12:07My fellow Buddhists tried to persuade me not to risk my life further, he said.
12:12But I must reach the West.
12:14If I don't, there's no point in coming back.
12:27Through time, the story just grew and grew.
12:31The travelling shadow puppet players still played out in the villages.
12:35And the city storytellers say that to tell the tale in full would take a hundred and ten days.
12:46Xuanzang,
12:48Xuanzang,
12:49Xuanzang,
12:50Xuanzang,
12:51he has been
13:08so today is one of the great myths of Chinese culture a strange and wonderful
13:29afterlife for a real tongue monk it's one signs one of those rare people who turn
13:40up in history visionary great scholar yet possessive incredible physical toughness
13:52and bravery and stamina after three years and nearly 5,000 miles he says we
14:02crossed the great snowy mountains and came down into India
14:12he crossed the river Indus and entered the plains of India with their teeming
14:16kingdoms and cities
14:22he traveled with Buddhist pilgrims down the Grand Trunk Road to the river Ganges
14:44and finally he reached Bodh Gaya and the sacred Bodhi tree where a thousand years
14:52before the Buddha had sat in meditation and gained enlightenment
15:00and when I saw it Xuanzang says I lay on the ground and shed many tears
15:06he stayed in India for 10 years studying the Buddha's teachings his noble truths about the human condition
15:16and then he set off home to take them back to the Chinese people to fire their imaginations as his story has ever since
15:26I call Xiao Yunhao
15:35Four-year-old Xiao Yunhao is hoping to be one of the next generation of monkey story tellers
15:41Joshua Yunyi
15:45When he walked to the water to the water, on the ground with the water, he threw his hand and said
15:47he highlighted the water of his hands for the water
15:49He saw it like there's marty Marina
15:51and he showed me the water on the ground
15:53I was happy with the house.
15:55We'd sit together and sit down and sit down in the back.
15:59There's a fence.
16:01The end of the street is a fence.
16:03It says,
16:04The sun, and the sun, and the sun, and the sea.
16:10I'm standing up and I'm standing up and I'm standing up and I'm standing up.
16:13I am standing on the ground and I'm standing in the ground.
16:16I'm standing on the ground.
16:18The China he came back to in 643 was the largest and strongest country on earth.
16:29Its capital, Chang'an, today's Xi'an, was one of the world's great centres of civilisation.
16:40And as for the emperor himself, Taizong was at the height of his powers and a stickler for protocol.
16:49The emperor's first words to Suan Tsang were, welcome back.
16:55But you never asked permission to go.
16:58Well, said Suan Tsang, I applied for a permit for foreign travel on several occasions, but it never worked.
17:06Perhaps because I was a nobody.
17:11He wasn't a nobody now. Crowds came just to look at him.
17:18He's supposed to be very good-looking, which certainly stood him in good stead.
17:24He was a very good-looking man.
17:28I think it's difficult to underestimate how much Suan Tsang really aroused people's interest in it,
17:35because so many people came to welcome him, so many people wanted to have to squint at him.
17:39In fact, he had to shut his doors and say, no more visitors, please, so that he could get home with some work.
17:45It was my life's task, Suan Tsang said, to bring the Buddha's teachings to the people of China for the benefit of generations to come.
18:02The Wild Goose Pagoda in Suan Tsang was built to house the manuscripts he brought back.
18:12Most were lost long ago in wars and revolutions, but for a few precious fragments.
18:17So these are in Pali.
18:19This is the language of South India and Sri Lanka.
18:22It must make you feel very good-looking.
18:52It must make you feel very proud to be monks here.
18:55Yes.
19:04The emperor now commissioned Suan Tsang to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.
19:13In the history of civilisation, it's a project comparable to the Arabic translations out of Greek.
19:19Or the Bible from Greek into Latin.
19:28With the permission of the emperor, he got quite a team together.
19:32He had 12 people in his team of Buddhists who knew about the literature.
19:39And he had eight people also in the team who were phrase connectors, is what they're called.
19:46People who tried to put things into Chinese at the time.
19:49It was all part of Taizong's insatiable appetite for learning.
19:57He was one of China's great rulers, a model of the Confucian virtuous man.
20:04He was a philosopher prince, poet and rationalist.
20:07And he thought that ruling was inseparable from the patronage of culture.
20:13And now, Taizong wouldn't leave Xuanzang alone.
20:18Xuanzang was supposed to be doing all this translation work, but he didn't have time.
20:22He had to spend all his time at court trying to fulfil the emperor's need for conversation.
20:27He was a man who was consumed by curiosity.
20:32The emperor himself said that the scriptures of Buddhism are as unfathomable as the depths of the sea or the height of the sky.
20:43In comparison, the teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu and the nine schools are just a single island in a great ocean.
20:51The emperor was so impressed by his bearings of intelligence that he asked him to hang up his Buddhist robe and to become his prime minister, help me run the country.
21:07And Xuanzang refused him.
21:10He said, it would be like taking a boat out of the water.
21:15Not only would it cease to be useful, but in time it would rot away.
21:21Not only would it be useful, but it's not a great thing.
21:25Not only would it be useful, but it would be useful.
21:32Xuanzang died in 664.
21:34His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu, near Xi'an.
21:36Spared in the cultural revolution of the 1960s,
21:39died in 664. His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjiao-se near Xi'an, spared
21:49in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s at the command of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai himself,
21:56too precious to the collective memory of the Chinese people.
22:03Over the centuries, Buddhism would profoundly touch the Chinese soul, as it still does.
22:10And back then, perhaps this Indian religion brought something they felt their culture lacked,
22:16a spiritual path based on personal conscience and compassion.
22:23For me, it's almost a homage to a fellow traveller. He travelled most of his route through Xinjiao
22:29and the north-west frontier of Pakistan and all the way across India to partner. And
22:34to think he did most of that on foot.
22:44Here's Sonsang, the great traveller. I can't believe that he had sandals on the Hindu Kush.
22:56There's a huge framed backpack here, made out of bamboo. Can you see the bamboo strips?
23:02With all the scrolls of the manuscripts stored there. Of course, actually, he had all that
23:07stuff in cases. It's a symbolic picture. And finally, the lovely touch here, a lantern to
23:15illuminate his journey at night.
23:27After he'd returned from China, Sonsang kept in touch with his old Indian friends by letter.
23:32And those letters, though unknown in the west, are among the most moving documents in the
23:40history of civilisation. In fact, in my opinion, they tell you what civilisation really is. Written
23:48by a member of one culture who had lovingly and totally immersed himself in another. He writes the news. The great emperor of the tongue, he says,
23:59is joyfully supporting Buddhism and ruling with justice and mercy like a compassionate Chakravatin, the old Sanskrit Indian word for a great ruler.
24:11But it's his letter to the abbot of Bodhgaya which is the most touching. Indeed, all the more so because they belong to opposed schools of Buddhism.
24:21A great while has elapsed since we were parted, he writes, which has only increased my admiration for you.
24:39I'm sending you my very best wishes.
24:46Of the works that we brought back from India, I've already translated 30 and two more will be finished by the end of the year.
24:57And there's one more thing. On my way back from India, I lost a horse load of manuscripts forwarding the river Indus. I'm sending you a list of the books in the hope that perhaps you can get them translated and sent to me.
25:19This is all for now. Best wishes. The monk, Swan San.
25:29In the seventh century, Xi'an was the greatest city in the world. Half a million people where the biggest European city had only a few thousand.
25:53It was a dynamic place of new styles, new fashions and new music.
26:01The city, it was said, was laid out like a vast chess board.
26:17About five miles square. And we're just here at this corner.
26:32Tang Xi'an was strictly regulated. That was the way Chinese cities had always been. Vast gated royal enclosures where public access was controlled.
26:42Xi'an had 108 wards, all of them under curfew.
26:47So this was an unseen ward in Tang dynasty times, in between a palace area and the great government area over there.
26:57So it was quite posh, quite well to do. There were some mansions of court musicians, a princess lived down the road.
27:09Looks like you can still buy some of their garden ornaments, doesn't it?
27:16The city was low rise. Palaces, residential quarters, gardens. Almost every ward had Buddhist and Taoist temples.
27:25Ni ha, ni ha. You see all the things for temples here? Incense.
27:31That's because, right back to the Tang dynasty, there was a huge temple in this area.
27:39And it's still a Taoist temple today, the Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:48There you go. The Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:52The theatre quarter and red light districts were here, the hostels for candidates for the civil service exams.
28:02And all tastes were catered for.
28:08Fortune tellers. Ancient Chinese craft.
28:11Later, later.
28:19There were special funeral streets. One of them features in a famous Tang novel.
28:24I love all these pilgrimage knick-knacks. My family are really fed up with me bringing it back from London.
28:28It may seem hard to square all this control with an outward-looking age, but the Tang was a centralised state where everyone was registered in the censuses.
28:39Social harmony came from knowing and keeping your place.
28:45OK, here's the drum tower. Much later, of course, Ming dynasty.
28:48But there was a drum tower in the middle of Tang dynasty, Xi'an, beating the drum for the curfew.
28:53A very strictly regulated city. You couldn't be found outside your own ward at night, for example.
29:00So the 600 beats of the drum, you had to be back home.
29:16In the 7th century, the West Market was the Central Asian Quarter.
29:19Here were the Silk Road merchants, Uyghurs and Persians, and they brought all their exotic foods with them.
29:29Cherries, barberries, apricots, peaches from Afghanistan.
29:38She's here.
29:39Oh, my God.
29:46I'm coming back there. Beautiful.
29:48She's here.
29:56Fizzing with energy, the capital city matched the ambitions of the Emperor Taizong himself.
30:01In this period, China changes from a feudal order to a bureaucratic state with civil service exams.
30:10And the state becomes synonymous with Han Chinese civilisation.
30:16Which is why people today look on Taizong's reign as a golden age.
30:21I'm a great admirer of Li Shimin and Tang Taizong.
30:26He was like a lot of founding emperors.
30:30He was very ambitious, very ruthless, excellent administrator, and probably a bit of a control freak.
30:36He did a lot to establish the rule of China.
30:40It was Taizong who decided that the Silk Road should be brought under the umbrella of Chinese civilisation.
30:52Only a few years after Xuanzang made his journey west, Chinese armies marched in his footsteps.
30:59The Tang emperors sent their armies up the Silk Route here into Central Asia.
31:07They captured the great city of Gaocheng here in 642.
31:13And you could say that the modern idea of a greater China, including all these territories,
31:20can be traced back to that time and this place.
31:29The goal was to protect China's luxury trade with the West, but it was also political,
31:36to make China the great power of Asia.
31:41China was now at its biggest extent before the 18th century.
31:45It had become a continental civilisation and will see itself that way from then until now.
31:59Driven by a thriving economy and a rising population, this is the time of the colonisation and development of the South,
32:08as China's centre of wealth and trade.
32:13The big story of the Tang dynasty between the 600s and the 900s is the shift to the South.
32:20At that time, Chinese official writes, every stream in the empire was full of ships, thousands, tens of thousands of great ships,
32:33moving constantly back and forth, always circulating, and if they stopped for a single moment,
32:4010,000 merchants would be bankrupted.
32:42It's the beginning of China as a commercial society and the beginning of great trading cities.
32:51And none of them was more important than the one that grew up at the junction of the Grand Canal going north-south
32:58and the Yangtze River going from the west to the east.
33:01The number one city of the Tang dynasty in trade, Yangzhou.
33:05If Xi'an was the centre of the imperial administration, Yangzhou was China's commercial heart.
33:29It's the beginning of the industrial South.
33:37You can still get a feel of the Tang in the core of old Yangzhou.
33:42And the key to the success of the city and to the rise of the South
33:47was one of China's great practical achievements, the Grand Canal.
33:51Built at the start of the 600s, the canal connected the north and the south with the river routes east and west.
34:10And it's still crucial to today's economy.
34:12Originally built 1,500 years ago, Xiaobo Lock today handles over 70 million tonnes a year.
34:22It's an amazing scene. It goes on all through the day, does it?
34:27Yes, 24 hours a day.
34:2924 hours a day? Yeah.
34:31Wow!
34:33It took five million men to build the first section in 605,
34:37eventually running north to a small place called Beijing.
34:43And it was built a thousand years before the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
34:49Every different part of the log.
34:51On the up is number three, and the middle is number two, and the behind is number one.
34:59Mainly carrying heavy material?
35:01Coal.
35:02Coal.
35:06Coal.
35:08Building material.
35:09Building material.
35:10China is building everywhere.
35:13Fantastic.
35:21Just as today, such projects were only possible with a command economy.
35:27And with it, the Tang transformed China.
35:33In the 7th century, the economy boomed.
35:39The canal shipped 165,000 tonnes of grain each year, just to feed the new garrisons in the south.
35:47And standing at the intersection of China's waterways, Yangzhou became a new kind of city.
35:57It's the first sign of the beginning of the modern.
36:03The city never slept.
36:08It's probably the first large city in history to employ artificial lighting on a grand scale.
36:20Even the barge traffic on the Grand Canal was able to keep moving through the city till well after midnight.
36:26So Tang Dynasty Yangzhou was always open for business.
36:33And so too, of course, was the entertainment industry.
36:38The taverns and music bars and the brothels.
36:42Described with delicate euphemisms in Tang Dynasty poetry as Yangzhou's ten miles of summer breeze.
36:50In the 830s, it was all immortalised by the poet Du Mu in a tag which has hung around the city for all its ups and downs from that day to this.
37:04The Yangzhou dream.
37:06And as the south grew rich, they looked for new outlets for international trade, not only by land but by sea, all the way to the Persian Gulf.
37:30So here in the south, in the Tang Dynasty, we've got the beginnings of what I suppose we can call the maritime Silk Road.
37:42Long distance international trade organised by merchants here in cities like Tuanzhou.
37:50And they're selling very top-end stuff, silks and fine cloths and exotic tableware.
37:58They're selling mass-produced ceramics designed with the Western consumer in mind.
38:04And they're also selling what will become the most popular drink in the world, tea.
38:10Tea.
38:15Tea had begun in the south, on the subtropical hillsides of Yunnan.
38:21Originally drunk for health, by the Tang its use had spread everywhere
38:26and the first books had been published on its beneficial effects.
38:30It's never looked back.
38:31They exported silk too, coveted since Roman times by Westerners, who were prepared to pay jaw-dropping prices for garments fit for an emperor.
38:48That is beautiful.
38:50You know, here is a dragon. It's a dragon.
38:53So you might think China's role today as a global mass producer is a new phenomenon in world history.
39:02But it's not.
39:04It's been estimated that Tang China had 55% of the world's GDP, with its vast internal market,
39:12from local village craftsmen and women, to the imperial factories,
39:17and from everyday ceramics to gorgeous works of art.
39:24Tang China was a giant engine of growth.
39:33So let's view the early medieval world in a different way.
39:38Tang China was the superpower.
39:41They exported Confucian ideas, Buddhist religion,
39:44their written script and their language, adopted across East Asia and Japan.
39:51The Japanese even imitated Tang Xi'an in the architecture of their capital, Nara.
39:59China's influence on the East was as profound as Rome in the Latin West.
40:05In the East, in the 7th century, all roads led to Xi'an.
40:10And if you want a symbol of the age, just outside Xi'an stand the statues of 108 ambassadors from Central Asia to Japan and Vietnam to Persia.
40:25The diplomatic pecking order of the Tang foreign office.
40:31This was the time when China went out to the world.
40:34And the world came here to China.
40:35And Islam also came to China in the time.
40:36And Islam also came to China in the time.
40:37Peacefully, which was not always open.
40:38And the world came here to China.
40:39And Islam also came to China in the time.
40:40Peacefully, which was not always open.
40:43And the world came here to China.
40:47And Islam also came to China in the time.
40:53and Islam also came to China in the town peacefully which was not always the case
41:08in history we believe during the Prophet Muhammad time peace behind him encourage
41:16our ancestors were the answers on the technology that they're in China seek
41:20knowledge as far as China it had been the year Schwanzang arrived in India that
41:25the Prophet had died in Arabia telling his followers to seek knowledge as far as
41:30China today so we speak Chinese Mandarin and the local dialect but a history we
41:40used to be got Chinese are be a Pharisee a Mongolian for language sometime and this
41:53time Tang Dynasty China was the center of the world Sian was the center of the world
41:59yes silver power the superpower to welcome an alien religion would hardly have been
42:13possible in the West or the Islamic world before modern times it shows that while
42:21the Chinese believed in the superiority of their civilization they also knew there
42:28were many paths to enlighten that all knowledge was useful in understanding
42:35the cosmos and the position of humanity in it and that idea is expressed in one of
42:45the most astonishing monuments in the whole of Chinese history it's a stone
42:52inscription recording the coming of Christianity to China as far back as the 630s
42:59it's one of China's great national treasures one of the select list of the a list monuments
43:07that can never leave the country and there's an account of the interaction of civilizations
43:12it's really hard to beat let's start at the top those nine characters say a monument commemorating
43:19the propagation of the luminous religion of the West that is Christianity
43:26in 635 it says a wise man from the West perhaps from Persia called Rabban Abraha decided to bring the
43:38Christian scriptures to China observing the path of the winds through great perils he made his way all the
43:45way all the way to China presumably on the Silk Route and arrived here in Shanghai the Emperor it says
43:51received him here in Shanghai and the Christian scriptures were translated in the Imperial Library and
43:57then the Emperor considered them in his private apartments and was deeply convinced by their truthfulness and
44:04issued this proclamation in 638
44:11the way for humanity at different times different places did not have the same name
44:19and the great sage at different times and different places was not in the same human body
44:26over history heaven ordained that true religion would be established in different countries and
44:33different climates so that all of humanity could be saved and we've considered the Christian scriptures
44:41and have decided that in all their essentials they are about the core values of humanity and we have
44:49decreed that they be propagated throughout the Empire
44:55but the story of China is one of cycles of creation and destruction and in the next century the Empire faced a
45:06perfect storm of crises it began out in the West battles against the expanding Muslim
45:18caliphate savage internal rebellions reported by one of the great tongue poets Lee by last year says Lee by
45:30we were fighting out to the north beyond the Great Wall and this year we're fighting far out in the West on the
45:38Kashgar River we've washed our blades in the streams of path here and grazed our horses amid the snows of
45:47Tian Shan there it is there's Tian Shan what a place to imagine it here in Zhaoha Tang Dynasty garrison town with its watch
45:57tower and its beacon platform but says Lee by the beacon fires are always burning the marching and the fighting never stops and nor does the dying you should know that the sword is a cursed thing that the wise man uses only if he must
46:15out in these vast expanses the tongue empire was overstretched and in the end they abandoned the West
46:33China would only regain it in the 18th century the crisis came under the emperor
46:51the apocalyptic eight-year rebellion of general An Lushan which saw the end of the town dream of a greater China
47:01the oasis of Turfan was one of the tongue
47:31garrison towns out in the western deserts so when Lee by writes his poem about fighting in the West this area he's talking about
47:41in about 755 because of the rebellion of emotion and she seeming the central government became much
47:51weaker so the station troops were returned to inland China to fight against the army of the emotion and she's
47:59and she's to me on the ocean yeah so this was a very bad shock to me yeah before Lord yeah
48:05on Lushan a bogeyman who chilled hearts back in she on
48:11far to the northeast he gathered armies to take revenge after the emperor had killed his son
48:17at home the dynasty had lost touch with the people the tombs of the 8th century royals near Xi'an show their pastimes and pleasures and hunting and courtly parties oblivious to the gathering store
48:35these wonderful images outside the tomb chamber they're um courtly ladies just attendants in their stylish fashions they could be
48:51uh fin de siècle Paris couldn't they central Asian fashions these are the uh the vogue in the early 700s
49:00the faces are so animated aren't they you can almost imagine their conversations
49:06the gossip of the rumors god that was seething with anxiety
49:18i'm afraid we chinese never managed to live more than 50 years without some terrible kind of cataclysmic event
49:24the cycles of chinese history that's right and it's been a particularly good period up until the emperor uh the brilliant emperor
49:33began allegedly to have to love his concubine uh yang guifei the precious concubine too much
49:41and he left quite a lot of the the work of governing the country to various people especially to this concubine's family and so on
49:50which was absolutely disastrous
49:52the story goes that the emperor sent his men over the land to find the most beautiful woman in china
49:59they failed of course but then when he was bathing here in the hot springs he saw the 18 year old daughter of a high official
50:13the warm water running down her glistening jade-like body as the poet bai ju yi tells the story
50:21han huang zhong se the emperor had dreamed of a beauty who could topple an empire
50:27meanwhile a girl in the young family came of age
50:33and when she smiled she could melt the heart with a single glance
50:39and from that day the emperor missed every morning court
50:45but then one day the ground was shaken by the war drums of a revolt
50:57and lu shan came in with his tibetans went straight to changan
51:03soldiers carried the emperor and his favorites out of uh the the the capital overnight
51:09it was it was so desperate an emergency but when they got into the hills because he was making for sechuan
51:15which was hilly and where he thought he would be safe um his bodyguards a small group of people rebelled
51:23and said they were not going any further as long as the emperor had this favorite and favorites with him
51:29and the favorites had to be slaughtered
51:31among them was the lady young strung up on a tree on a silk cord
51:49the great rebellion of the andu shan period was extremely hard on china
51:55an enormous number of people were killed or displaced
52:03and we know that the census were taken before that happened and afterward 35 million people were missing
52:11as government broke down eight years of horror unfolded
52:15it was a national catastrophe described by china's greatest poet dufu
52:21in lines remembered ever since by the chinese people in times of trouble
52:27guo po shan he zai cheng chun cao mu shen
52:33gan shi hua jian lei guo po just two words
52:39it means the state has been demolished and it doesn't exist anymore there's no state left
52:45but shan he zai the mountains and rivers still remain
52:53in all the three thousand years of chinese poetry the world's oldest living poetic tradition
52:59it's dufu the poet of this terrible time who is their most loved because he spoke in the people's voice
53:07he's still part of the school syllabus today so every chinese child knows how the tongue fell
53:17hi hello not from their history class but from poetry
53:21oh very good you speak english wonderful wonderful
53:25and here at the secondary school in yanshu outside loyang
53:29they've an extra reason to know all about it
53:31this is the tomb here
53:33yes
53:35because dufu's grave is in the school grounds
53:39he wasn't famous when he died
53:41the inscription says
53:43the tomb of mr du
53:47government deputy irrigation inspector
53:49jeng kong jim mu
53:51terrific
53:53wonderful wonderful
53:55wonderful
53:59fantastic
54:01fantastic
54:03as the tongue world collapsed
54:05one last brief poem by dufu
54:07tells how he met again
54:09south of the river
54:11a famous musician once high in the king's favour
54:15and thank you
54:17and thank you
54:18Elise
54:20to the temple
54:22to the temple
54:23to the temple
54:24before you
54:25i say
54:27and thank you
54:28to the temple
54:29in my heart
54:30she's house
54:31and as the temple
54:32to me
54:33and for the temple
54:34before you
54:35and when she could
54:36she took
54:37there
54:38to do
54:39she
54:40to the temple
54:41in
54:43by the temple
54:44Rua hua shi jie, yu feng jun.
54:59Qi Wang jai yi sun chang jia.
55:03Who is the prince of the Qi, Qi Wang?
55:07Does anybody know?
55:08Is he a big, important person?
55:10As I know, Qi Wang is the brother of the emperor Tang Xuanzong.
55:15He's the brother of the emperor, Xuanzong.
55:18Great.
55:19So, very important man then.
55:21Du Fu is recalling the palace of Qi Wang.
55:26Now, this phrase here,
55:29zheng shi jiang nan hou feng jing,
55:35which you read beautifully, if I may say so.
55:37It was very, very good.
55:39And then this line here is so fantastic.
55:42Don't laugh at me.
55:43Luo hua shi jie, yu feng jun.
55:48The falling flowers time season is here again.
55:53And in this time, I meet you again.
55:56The falling flowers in Chinese poetry.
55:59Can you explain to me what this means?
56:02Anybody?
56:03I think it means, you know, the flowers are falling down,
56:07and the period of the season is gone.
56:10And it also means the Tang dynasty is gone.
56:13And in the same time, he meets his old friend,
56:17and the old memories, the beautiful memories, is back.
56:21And he feels very sad.
56:22So, falling flowers is not just blossom falling,
56:25it's a feeling of melancholy in the heart.
56:28And the Tang dynasty is falling,
56:31there is a mood of autumn and sadness,
56:34and he meets the man who was once this great figure.
56:38Such a simple poem, isn't it?
56:40Just four lines, and yet it's full, full of fantastic ideas.
56:45Thank you for being patient.
56:49To you.
57:07So the state was broken,
57:09but the landscape survived,
57:11and so did the people.
57:13It's a very high-class social media piece here.
57:18The ninth century was a time of famines and more rebellions.
57:23In the end, the Tang lose their nerve
57:26and start to look inwards.
57:30In the 840s, they even launch a persecution of Buddhism,
57:33now a symbol of un-Chinese ideas.
57:38And so the mandate of heaven was lost.
57:41But as the Buddha had said,
57:43and the Chinese have always known too well,
57:46all things must pass.
57:49And so the first of June,
57:50the last Tang emperor abdicated,
57:58bringing to an end an age of amazing creativity.
58:06An age by which the Chinese still define themselves today,
58:10a time in which Xi'an here rivalled and then surpassed Baghdad and Constantinople,
58:16as a city of the world.
58:20For a time, China will plunge into anarchy,
58:23but a new age of greatness will soon arise,
58:27as in China it always has.
58:29It always has.
58:38Well, the story continues next Thursday at 9 here on BBC2.
58:41But next, F1 driver Felipe Massa
58:44and the Williams team boss Claire Williams
58:46join the Claire Balding Show.
58:48No.
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