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Documentary, BBC-The Story of China 2 Silk Roads and China Ships
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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.
01:19Parker Holders to the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty is one of the greatest
01:24dark age of the world in波ades. The Tang Dynasty has been a very strong history of the
01:28world of the国. In the story of China, we have a very strong force, the character of the
01:30world. The Orange County has been a very strong force, and he has kept his own
01:31use of the power of the world. In the story of the world, the turn of the world's
01:33autre. The Tang Dynasty is an early charge of the world in the Luxury
01:33and the King Dynasty. The Ang courses had been a very strong force, but it's lulled around
01:36from a long range of the curso of the world. We've reached the world and the
01:37world's important, and it's a warm- attentive team. We'll go everywhere if you like to the world's
01:38It's often said that in history, China has been a closed civilisation, introverted,
02:01cutting itself off from the world.
02:02And there have been times when it's looked that way, but since prehistory, China has never
02:12been isolated and has thrived on contact.
02:18And 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.
02:41We 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.
02:52And 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.
03:11spoilers.
03:12For the magic of the Silk Road, magic of Central Asia.
03:17There's Han Chinese, there's Uighurs everywhere.
03:21It's a guy from Kyrgyzstan.
03:22He can tell by his ham.
03:23just like it would have been in ancient times you would have seen Arabs and
03:27Persians, probably Indians along with the Han Chinese on this very edge of you
03:34know Tang Dynasty China. Greek historian Polybius has a very interesting remark
03:39about this he's writing in the 100s BC he says that in ancient times the
03:46histories of Europe and Asia were completely separate they ran their own
03:50way but from our age onwards the history of Europe began to interact and engage
03:57with the history of Asia and history Asia with that of Europe. You could say it's
04:03the beginning of universal history and it's happening in the Tang Dynasty but in
04:13history when two civilizations first come into contact it's not always peaceful
04:18and not always enriching
04:24to really open up to another culture needs patience and humility to be willing to
04:29shed your own preconceptions and in the 7th century the Chinese were confident
04:37enough to do that to be changed by the experience of the other
04:47the story begins at the Chinese end of the Silk Road in the old city of Luoyang
04:53Luoyang was the the ancient capital of the Zhou Dynasty for 500 years and for those centuries its poets and scholars have praised it as a place of great
04:54culture it was the real heart of China they said in the middle of the middle plain of the middle
05:11kingdom and this is not just a story about empires and economies but about what it is to be civilized it's about a new spirit in Chinese culture
05:27look at this magic world Aladdin's cave a spirit that will give birth to the
05:34greatest age of Chinese poetry a time when poetry came out of the court into the
05:40streets a witness to the times expressing the human condition as never before
05:46this is a time so do move famous poem of the Tang Dynasty knowing the
05:54insecurity of human life as the Chinese always have this floating life is just
06:01like the water under the ice flowing eastwards day and night and no one
06:08notices it's not great so it's a place rich in culture rich in trade and merchants
06:18and interested in foreigners and if you want to see just how interested go a few
06:27miles outside Luoyang where the most famous Indian of all time is commemorated the
06:34Buddha the foreigner who most fascinated the Chinese through the whole of their
06:40history the adoption of this Indian religion would leave its mark on the very
06:47DNA of Chinese civilization what better symbol is there of the impact of Buddhism
06:54on Tang Dynasty China indeed a symbol of the impact of the exchange of ideas in
07:00civilizations than this great cliff pockmarked with devotion and in the
07:05middle 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
07:23how that happened how China embraced Buddhism is one of the great stories in
07:29history an adventure that generations of storytellers have turned into China's
07:37favorite fairytale
07:39the emperor had a dream and in the dream a strange man appeared to him with his skin the
07:55color of the color of gold framed by the Sun and moon and stars
07:59how do you want that time
08:00how do you want that time
08:02how do you see this stuff
08:03what's in the court astrologers and diviners interpreted the dream
08:08how do you mean the job
08:10but this man had come from the west and it must be the Buddha himself
08:17the emperor was fascinated and organized an expedition 18 courtiers and scholars with all their
08:25attendants journeyed out to the west to find out more they got as far as Afghanistan and there in a
08:32Buddhist monastery they met two Indian monks who agreed to come back with them to China
08:39they came back here and were established in this monastery the white horse pagoda after the white horses that they rode
08:50and they translated the first Buddhist scriptures ever to be rendered into Chinese and they died here and were buried here
08:58this is the tomb of one of them Kasyapa Matanga
09:02it's not the first exchange between India and China but from that moment onwards the dialogue of civilisations will be continuous
09:12now the story moves on in time to the year 600
09:22in the wider world the Roman Empire has fallen
09:25Byzantium is flowering and in China the mandate of heaven has passed to a new dynasty the tongue
09:37in a village outside Luoyang
09:40a boy was born who would become one of the most famous people in Chinese history
09:46and his name was Xuanzang
09:51Xuanzang must have known this place very well from childhood and known all the stories especially
10:01about the two strangers who'd come from India I was inflamed by a passionate curiosity he says
10:07about the Buddha and about the origins of the faith and I applied for a foreign travel permit several
10:13times to no avail perhaps because I was a nobody and in the end I took matters into my own hand
10:21and I left in secret for India
10:31he was 26 years old and his journey would change the course of Chinese civilization
10:38it's a story that's fascinated me over the years traveling in his footsteps between China and Central
10:44Malaysia and across Afghanistan into India
10:48at that time Xuanzang said the tongue were new on the throne China's frontiers didn't extend far
10:55there was a ban on foreign travel at first I had to move by night to dodge the border guards
11:01the real life adventures of Xuanzang gave birth to some of China's best loved legends and characters
11:14the tongue monk and his crazy companions
11:16the lustful piggy the dimwitted Sandy and above all the faithful monkey
11:27all of them changed by their magical encounters along the silk road
11:33in later novels and films it turned into the kind of fantasy the Chinese have always loved both
11:50a comic adventure and spiritual allegory
11:59on the real journey Xuanzang tells of oceans of sand
12:02and the exotic peoples whose lands he passed through
12:06my fellow buddhist 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
12:18and i must reach the west
12:27through time the story just grew and grew
12:31the traveling shadow puppet players still played out in the villages
12:40and the city storytellers say that to tell the tale in full would take 110 days
12:49of them
12:53all the different people
12:54follow them
12:59during his life
13:05the weekend
13:10the river
13:12so 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
13:39turn up in history visionary great scholar and yet possessive incredible physical
13:51toughness and bravery and stamina after three years and nearly 5,000 miles he
14:01says we crossed the great snowy mountains and came down into India
14:12he crossed the river Indus and entered the plains of India with their teeming kingdoms and cities
14:18he traveled with Buddhist pilgrims down the Grand Trunk Road to the river Ganges
14:32and finally he reached Bodh Gaya and the sacred Bodhi tree where a thousand years before the Buddha had
14:53sat in meditation and gained enlightenment and when I saw it Xuanzang says I lay on the
15:04ground and shed many tears he stayed in India for 10 years studying the Buddha's teachings his noble
15:15truth about the human condition then he set off home to take them back to the Chinese people to fire
15:24their imaginations as his story has ever since four-year-old Xiaoyun Hao is hoping to be one of the next
15:38generation of monkey storytellers to know she tell you she saw she are shall they are there for
15:47boo-boo to shout to just a young teenager you will believe I y'all sure don't have your job
15:53show the value jada t-day need for a keo-da boo-hobe she don't don't be a high-wantish
16:02On the top of the page, it was written on the page,
16:05on the page, on the page, on the page,
16:08on the page, on the page,
16:11on the page, on the page,
16:14on the page, on the page.
16:23The China he came back to in 643
16:26was the largest and strongest country on Earth.
16:29Its capital, Chang'an, today's Xi'an,
16:32was one of the world's great centres of civilisation.
16:40And as for the emperor himself,
16:42Taizong was at the height of his powers
16:45and a stickler for protocol.
16:49The emperor's first words to Xuanzang were,
16:51Welcome back.
16:55But you never asked permission to go.
16:58Well, said Xuanzang,
17:00I applied for a permit for foreign travel on several occasions,
17:04but it never worked.
17:06Perhaps because I was a nobody.
17:11He wasn't a nobody now.
17:13Crowds came just to look at him.
17:16He's supposed to be very good looking,
17:21which certainly stood him in good stead.
17:24He was a very good looking man.
17:28I think it's difficult to underestimate
17:30how much Xuanzang really aroused people's interest in it,
17:35because so many people came to welcome him,
17:37so many people wanted to have to squint at him.
17:39In fact, he had to shut his doors and say,
17:41no more visitors, please,
17:43so that he could get on with some work.
17:45It was my life's task, Xuanzang said,
17:55to bring the Buddha's teachings to the people of China,
17:59for the benefit of generations to come.
18:02The Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was built to house the manuscripts he brought back.
18:11Most were lost long ago in wars and revolutions,
18:14but for a few precious fragments.
18:17So these are in Pali?
18:19Yeah.
18:20This is the language of South India and Sri Lanka.
18:37657 books in 520 packages on 20 pack horses.
18:47It must make you feel very proud to be monks here.
18:51It must make you feel very proud to be monks here.
18:54Yes.
19:04The emperor now commissioned Xuanzang
19:06to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.
19:13In the history of civilization,
19:15it's a project comparable to the Arabic translations out of Greek,
19:19or the Bible from Greek into Latin.
19:24With 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,
19:38and he had eight people also in the team who were phrase connectors,
19:44is 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,
20:00a model of the Confucian virtuous man.
20:04He was a philosopher prince, poet and rationalist.
20:08And he thought that ruling was inseparable from the patronage of culture.
20:12And now, Taizong wouldn't leave Xuanzang alone.
20:17Xuanzang was supposed to be doing all this translation work,
20:21but he didn't have time.
20:22He had to spend all his time at court,
20:24trying to fulfil the emperor's need for conversation.
20:27He was a man who was consumed by curiosity.
20:33The emperor himself said that the scriptures of Buddhism
20:37are 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
20:48are just a single island in a great ocean.
20:52The emperor was so impressed by his bearings of intelligence
20:59that he asked him to hang up his Buddhist robe
21:02and to become his prime minister, help me run the country.
21:07And Xuanzang refused him.
21:10He said,
21:11It would be like taking a boat out of the water.
21:14Not only would it cease to be useful,
21:17but in time it would rot away.
21:20Xuanzang died in 664.
21:25His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu near Xi'an.
21:30Xuanzang died in 664.
21:33His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu near Xi'an.
21:37Spared in the cultural revolution of the 1960s at the command of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai himself.
21:55Too precious to the collective memory of the Chinese people.
22:00Over the centuries, Buddhism would profoundly touch the Chinese soul, as it still does.
22:09And back then, perhaps this Indian religion brought something they felt their culture lacked.
22:16A spiritual path based on personal conscience and compassion.
22:21For me, it's almost a homage to a fellow traveller.
22:26He travelled most of his route through Xinjaong and the northwest frontier of Pakistan
22:30and all the way across India to Patna.
22:32And to think he did most of that on foot.
22:36Here's Xuanzang, the great traveller.
22:49Can't believe that he had sandals on the Hindu Kush.
22:55A huge framed backpack here, made out of bamboo.
22:59Can you see the bamboo strips?
23:01With all the scrolls of the manuscripts stored there.
23:05Of course, actually, he had all that stuff in cases.
23:08It's a symbolic picture.
23:10And finally, the lovely touch here.
23:13A lantern to illuminate his journey at night.
23:18After he'd returned from China, Xuanzang kept in touch with his old Indian friends by letter.
23:32And those letters, though unknown in the west,
23:36are among the most moving documents in the history of civilisation.
23:41In fact, in my opinion, they tell you what civilisation really is.
23:47Written by a member of one culture who had lovingly and totally immersed himself in another.
23:55He writes the news.
23:57The great emperor of the tongue, he says, is joyfully supporting Buddhism.
24:03And ruling with justice and mercy like a compassionate Chakravatin.
24:08The old Sanskrit Indian word for a great ruler.
24:12But it's his letter to the abbot of Bodhgaya which is the most touching.
24:16Indeed, all the more so because they belong to opposed schools of Buddhism.
24:25A great while has elapsed since we were parted, he writes,
24:35which has only increased my admiration for you.
24:40I'm sending you my very best wishes.
24:46Of the works that we brought back from India, I've already translated 30.
24:55And two more will be finished by the end of the year.
24:58And there's one more thing.
25:05On my way back from India, I lost a horse load of manuscripts,
25:10forwarding the river Indus.
25:12I'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.
25:24Best wishes.
25:26The monk, Swan San.
25:28In the seventh century, Xi'an was the greatest city in the world.
25:47Half 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.
26:14The city, it was said, was laid out like a vast chess ball.
26:26About five miles square.
26:28And we're just here at this corner.
26:33Tang Xi'an was strictly regulated.
26:35That was the way Chinese cities had always been.
26:38Vast gated royal enclosures where public access was controlled.
26:43Xi'an had 108 wards, all of them under curfew.
26:48So this was an unseen ward in Tang dynasty times,
26:52in between a palace area and the great government area over there.
26:58So it was quite posh, quite well to do.
27:01There 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.
27:18Palaces, residential quarters, gardens.
27:21Almost every ward had Buddhist and Taoist temples.
27:24Ni ha, ni ha.
27:25Ni ha.
27:26Ni ha.
27:27You see all the things for temples here, incense.
27:31That's because, right back to the Tang dynasty,
27:35there was a huge temple in this area.
27:38And it's still a Taoist temple today, the Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:49There you go.
27:50The Temple of the Eight Immortals.
27:52The theatre quarter and red light districts were here,
27:59the hostels for candidates for the civil service exams,
28:02and all tastes were catered for.
28:08Fortune tellers, ancient Chinese craft.
28:12Later, later.
28:19There were special funeral streets.
28:21One of them features in a famous Tang novel.
28:24I love all these pilgrimage knick-knacks.
28:26My family are really fed up with me bringing it back from London.
28:29It may seem hard to square all this control with an outward-looking age,
28:33but the Tang was a centralised state where everyone was registered in the censuses.
28:38Social harmony came from knowing and keeping your place.
28:45OK, here's the drum tower.
28:46Much later, of course, Ming dynasty,
28:48but there was a drum tower in the middle of Tang dynasty, Xi'an,
28:52beating the drum for the curfew.
28:54A very strictly regulated city.
28:57You 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.
29:20Here were the Silk Road merchants, Uighurs and Persians,
29:24and they brought all their exotic foods with them.
29:27Cherries, barberries, apricots, peaches from Afghanistan.
29:34She's here.
29:39Oh, my God.
29:45I'm coming back there. Beautiful.
29:49She's here.
29:51Fizzing with energy, the capital city matched the ambitions of the Emperor Taizong himself.
30:03In this period, China changes from a feudal order to a bureaucratic state,
30:08with civil service exams.
30:10And the state becomes synonymous with Han Chinese civilisation.
30:17Which is why people today look on Taizong's reign as a golden age.
30:23I'm a great admirer of Li Shimin and Tang Taizong.
30:27He was like a lot of founding emperors.
30:30He was very ambitious, very ruthless, excellent administrator,
30:34and probably a bit of a control freak.
30:37He did a lot to establish the rule of China.
30:42It was Taizong who decided that the Silk Road should be brought under the umbrella of Chinese civilisation.
30:53Only a few years after Xuanzang made his journey west, Chinese armies marched in his footsteps.
31:01The Tang emperors sent their armies up the Silk Road here into Central Asia.
31:08They 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.
31:25The goal was to protect China's luxury trade with the West,
31:34but it was also political, to 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,
31:48and will see itself that way from then until now.
31:55China was now at the same time.
32:00Driven by a thriving economy and a rising population,
32:04this is the time of the colonisation and development of the South,
32:08as China's centre of wealth and trade.
32:14The big story of the Tang dynasty, between the 600s and the 900s,
32:19is the shift to the South.
32:21At that time, Chinese official writes,
32:26every stream in the empire was full of ships,
32:29thousands, tens of thousands of great ships,
32:33moving constantly back and forth, always circulating,
32:37and if they stopped for a single moment,
32:4010,000 merchants would be bankrupted.
32:43It's the beginning of China as a commercial society,
32:47and the beginning of great trading cities.
32:51And none of them was more important than the one that grew up
32:54at the junction of the Grand Canal going north-south,
32:57and the Yangtze River going from the west to the east.
33:01The number one city of the Tang dynasty in trade, Yangzhou.
33:07If Xi'an was the centre of the imperial administration,
33:25Yangzhou was China's commercial heart.
33:29It's the beginning of the industrial South.
33:38You can still get a feel of the Tang in the core of old Yangzhou.
33:43And 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.
34:00Built at the start of the 600s,
34:02the canal connected the north and the south
34:05with the river routes east and west.
34:10And it's still crucial to today's economy.
34:14Originally built 1,500 years ago,
34:18Xiaobo Lock today handles over 70 million tonnes a year.
34:23It's an amazing scene.
34:25It goes on all through the day, does it?
34:27Yes, 24 hours a day.
34:2924 hours a day?
34:30Yeah.
34:31Wow.
34:34It took 5 million men to build the first section in 605,
34:39eventually running north to a small place called Beijing.
34:44And it was built 1,000 years before the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
34:49Every different part of the log.
34:51On the up is number 3,
34:55and the middle is number 2,
34:57and the behind is number 1.
34:59Mainly carrying heavy material.
35:02Coal.
35:05Coal.
35:06And...
35:07Building material.
35:09Building material.
35:10China is building everywhere.
35:12Yeah.
35:13Fantastic.
35:21Just as today,
35:22such projects were only possible with a command economy.
35:27And with it, the Tang transformed China.
35:31In the 7th century, the economy boomed.
35:38The canal shipped 165,000 tonnes of grain each year,
35:44just to feed the new garrisons in the south.
35:48And standing at the intersection of China's waterways,
35:54Yangzhou became a new kind of city.
35:57It's the first sign of the beginning of the modern.
36:03The city never slept.
36:10It's probably the first large city in history
36:16to employ artificial lighting on a grand scale.
36:20Even the barge traffic on the Grand Canal
36:22was 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
36:47as Yangzhou's ten miles of summer breeze.
36:53In the 830s, it was all immortalised by the poet Du Mu
36:58in a tag which has hung around the city for all its ups and downs
37:02from that day to this.
37:04The Yangzhou dream.
37:17And as the south grew rich,
37:22they looked for new outlets for international trade,
37:26not only by land but by sea,
37:29all the way to the Persian Gulf.
37:32So here in the south, in the Tang dynasty,
37:36we've got the beginnings of what I suppose
37:39we can call the maritime Silk Road.
37:43Long-distance international trade organised by merchants
37:49here in cities like Twenzhou.
37:52And they're selling very top-end stuff,
37:55silks and fine cloths and exotic tableware.
37:59They're selling mass-produced ceramics
38:02designed with the Western consumer in mind.
38:05And they're also selling what will become
38:08the most popular drink in the world, tea.
38:13tea had begun in the south,
38:18on the subtropical hillsides of Yunnan.
38:21Originally drunk for health,
38:23by the Tang its use had spread everywhere
38:26and the first books had been published
38:28on its beneficial effects.
38:30It's never looked back.
38:36They exported silk too,
38:38coveted since Roman times by Westerners,
38:41who were prepared to pay jaw-dropping prices
38:45for garments fit for an emperor.
38:50You know, here is a dragon.
38:53It's a dragon.
38:55So you might think China's role today
38:58as a global mass producer is a new phenomenon
39:01in world history, but it's not.
39:04It's been estimated that Tang China had 55% of the world's GDP,
39:10with its vast internal market,
39:13from local village craftsmen and women
39:16to the imperial factories,
39:18and from everyday ceramics to gorgeous works of art.
39:23Tang China was a giant engine of growth.
39:34So let's view the early medieval world in a different way.
39:38Tang China was the superpower.
39:40They exported Confucian ideas, Buddhist religion,
39:45their written script and their language,
39:48adopted across East Asia and Japan.
39:52The Japanese even imitated Tang Xi'an
39:55in the architecture of their capital, Nara.
40:00China's influence on the East
40:02was as profound as Rome in the Latin West.
40:06In the East, in the 7th century,
40:08all roads led to Xi'an.
40:12And if you want a symbol of the age,
40:14just outside Xi'an stand the statues of 108 ambassadors
40:19from Central Asia to Japan and Vietnam to Persia,
40:25the diplomatic pecking order of the Tang Foreign Office.
40:30This was the time when China went out to the world
40:35and the world came here to China.
41:01And Islam also came to China in the Tang.
41:05Peacefully, which was not always the case in history.
41:11We believe during the Prophet Muhammad's time,
41:14peace beyond him, encourage our ancestors
41:16to learn science and technology,
41:18they do better in China.
41:20Seek knowledge as far as China.
41:22It had been the year Xuanzang arrived in India
41:25that the Prophet had died in Arabia,
41:27telling his followers to seek knowledge as far as China.
41:31Today, we speak Chinese Mandarin and local dialect,
41:40but in history, we speak Chinese,
41:42RBR, Pharisee, Mongolian.
41:44For a language, sometimes.
41:53And this time, Tang Dynasty, China was the centre of the world.
41:58Xi'an was the centre of the world, I suppose.
42:00Yeah.
42:01Superpower.
42:02To welcome an alien religion would hardly have been possible in the West
42:14or the Islamic world before modern times.
42:17It shows that while the Chinese believed in the superiority of their civilisation,
42:24they also knew there were many paths to enlightenment.
42:29That all knowledge was useful in understanding the cosmos
42:35and the position of humanity in it.
42:42And that idea is expressed in one of the most astonishing monuments
42:47in the whole of Chinese history.
42:51It's a stone inscription recording the coming of Christianity to China
42:56as far back as the 630s.
43:00Well, it's one of China's great national treasures,
43:03one of the select list of the A-list monuments
43:07that can never leave the country.
43:09And as an account of the interaction of civilisations,
43:12it's really hard to beat.
43:13Let's start at the top.
43:15Those nine characters say a monument commemorating
43:19the propagation of the luminous religion of the West,
43:23that is Christianity.
43:25In 635, it says, a wise man from the West,
43:33perhaps from Persia, called Rabban Abraha,
43:37decided to bring the Christian scriptures to China.
43:40Observing the path of the winds through great perils,
43:44he made his way all the way to China,
43:46presumably on the Silk Route,
43:48and arrived here in Shang'an.
43:50The emperor, it says, received him here in Shang'an,
43:53and the Christian scriptures were translated in the imperial library,
43:57and then the emperor considered them in his private apartments,
44:00and was deeply convinced by their truthfulness,
44:04and issued this proclamation in 638.
44:08The way for humanity, at different times and different places,
44:16did not have the same name.
44:19And the great sage, at different times and different places,
44:23was not in the same human body.
44:26Over history, heaven ordained that true religion
44:30would be established in different countries and different climates,
44:34so that all of humanity could be saved.
44:37And we've considered the Christian scriptures,
44:41and have decided that in all their essentials,
44:44they are about the core values of humanity,
44:48and we have decreed that they would be propagated throughout the empire.
44:55But the story of China is one of cycles of creation and destruction.
45:01And in the next century, the empire faced a perfect storm of crises.
45:12It began out in the west.
45:16Battles against the expanding Muslim Caliphate,
45:20savage internal rebellions,
45:22reported by one of the great Tang poets, Li Bai.
45:27Last year, says Li Bai,
45:30we were fighting out to the north beyond the Great Wall.
45:33And this year, we're fighting far out in the west,
45:37on the Kashgar River.
45:39We've washed our blades in the streams of Parthia,
45:43and grazed our horses amid the snows of Tianshan.
45:48There it is. There's Tianshan.
45:50What a place to imagine it, here in Zhao He.
45:53Tang Dynasty garrison town,
45:56with its watch tower and its beacon platform.
45:59But, says Li Bai,
46:01the beacon fires are always burning.
46:04The marching and the fighting never stops,
46:06and nor does the dying.
46:08You should know that the sword is a cursed thing,
46:11that the wise man uses only if he must.
46:26Out in these vast expanses,
46:28the Tang Empire was overstretched.
46:31And in the end, they abandoned the west.
46:42China would only regain it in the 18th century.
46:48The crisis came under the Emperor Xuanzong,
46:51the apocalyptic eight-year rebellion of General An Lushan,
46:56which saw the end of the Tang dream of a greater China.
47:01the city of Taufan.
47:02His family and children,
47:03the runtime of the town of Tuningian,
47:06the weakening of Aguntus,
47:08the dead body of Taufan's.
47:09The tradition of Taufan,
47:10the early two of the 70s,
47:11of a new civilization.
47:12The area of Taufan's.
47:13The sands find a nice place between the roots
47:14and the emergence of the Taufan.
47:16Theations of Taufan's.
47:18In the end, the mountain of the whole city of Taufan
47:20was one of the Tang近y to Fernando Vivian.
47:26Jupiter's.
47:27The oasis of Turfan was one of the Tang
47:31garrison towns out in the western deserts so when lee by writes his poem about fighting in the west
47:39it's this area he's talking about yes i think so yeah in about 755 because of the the rebellion of
47:48enlou shan and shesiming the central government became much weaker so the station troops were
47:54returned to inland china to fight against the the army of the enlou shan and shesiming an lushan yeah
48:01this was a very big shock yeah before lord yeah an lushan a bogeyman who chilled hearts back in xi'an
48:13far to the northeast he gathered armies to take revenge after the emperor had killed his son
48:18at home the dynasty had lost touch with the people the tombs of the 8th century royals near xi'an
48:29show their pastimes and pleasures and hunting and courtly parties oblivious to the gathering storm
48:36these wonderful images outside the tomb chamber they're um courtly ladies just attendants
48:49in their stylish fashions they could be uh fin de siècle paris couldn't they central asian fashions
48:56these are the the vogue in the early 700s
49:00the faces are so animated aren't they you can almost imagine their conversations the gossip
49:09of the rumors the courts that was seething with anxiety
49:18i'm afraid we chinese never managed to live more than 50 years without some terrible
49:22kind of cataclysmic event the cycles of chinese history that's right and it's been a particularly
49:29good period up until the emperor uh the brilliant emperor began allegedly to have to love his
49:36concubine uh yang guifei the precious concubine too much and he left quite a lot of the the work of
49:45governing the country to various people especially to this concubine's family and song which was absolutely
49:51disastrous the story goes that the emperor sent his men over the land to find the most beautiful woman
49:58in china they failed of course but then when he was bathing here in the hot springs he saw the 18 year
50:08old daughter of a high official
50:14the warm water running down her glistening jade-like body as the poet bai ju yi tells the story
50:21the emperor had dreamed of a beauty who could topple an empire
50:30meanwhile a girl in the young family came of age
50:36and when she smiled she could melt the heart with a single glance
50:40and from that day the emperor missed every morning court
50:49but then one day the ground was shaken by the war drums of a revolt
50:54and lushan came in with his tibetans went straight to changan soldiers carried the emperor and his
51:04favorites out of uh the the the capital overnight they it was it was so desperate an emergency but
51:11when they got into the hills because he was making for sechuan which was hilly and where he thought he
51:16would be safe um his bodyguards a small group of people rebelled and said they were not going any
51:24further as long as the emperor had this favorite and favorites with him and the favorites had to be slaughtered
51:37among them was the lady young strung up on a tree on a silk cord
51:46the great rebellion of the andushan period was extremely hard on china
51:56an 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
52:09missing as government broke down eight years of horror unfolded
52:16it was a national catastrophe described by china's greatest poet dufu in lines remembered ever since
52:24by the chinese people in times of trouble
52:27it was just two words it means the state has been demolished and it doesn't exist anymore there's no
52:45state left but shan herzai the mountains the river still remain
52:48in all the 3 000 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
53:18hi hello not from their history class but from poetry oh very good you speak english
53:24wonderful wonderful and here at the secondary school in yanshu outside loyang they've an extra
53:30reason to know all about it this is the tomb here yes because dufu's grave is in the school grounds
53:39he wasn't famous when he died the inscription says
53:45the tomb of mr du government deputy irrigation inspector
53:49wonderful wonderful wonderful as the tongue world collapsed one last brief poem by dufu
54:07tells how he met again south of the river a famous musician once high in the king's favor
54:14请欣赫八三八代的节目
54:20江南冯里归年,杜申
54:26岐王翟丽,咸谳츄尘常见
54:31崔九堂乾記肚瑜
54:36正是江南,浩方靜
54:41I know Chi Wang, who is the prince of the Qi, Qi Wang, and does anybody know, is he
55:08a big, important person?
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,
55:29which 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.
55:44The falling flowers time season is here again, and in this time, I meet you again.
55:56The falling flowers, in Chinese poetry, can you explain to me what this means?
56:02Anybody?
56:03I think it means, you know, the flowers are falling down, and a period of the season
56:09is gone.
56:10And it also means the Tang dynasty is gone.
56:13And in the same time, he meets his old friend, and the old memories, the beautiful memories
56:20are back, and he feels very sad.
56:23So, falling flowers is not just blossom falling, it's a feeling of melancholy in the heart.
56:28And the Tang dynasty is falling, there is a mood of autumn and sadness, and he meets
56:36the man who was once this great figure.
56:39Such 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.
56:48To you.
56:53So the state was broken, but the landscape survived, and 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 and start to look inwards.
57:30In the 840s, they even launch a persecution of Buddhism, now a symbol of un-Chinese ideas.
57:38And so, the mandate of heaven was lost.
57:41But as the Buddha had said, and the Chinese have always known too well, all things must pass.
57:48On the 1st of June, 907, the last Tang emperor abdicated, bringing to an end an age of amazing creativity.
58:03An age by which the Chinese still define themselves today.
58:09A time in which Xi'an here rivalled and then surpassed Baghdad and Constantinople as a city of the world.
58:18For a time, China will plunge into anarchy.
58:23But a new age of greatness will soon arise.
58:27As in China, it always has.
58:30Well, the story continues next Thursday at 9 here on BBC Two.
58:42But next, F1 driver Felipe Massa and the Williams team boss Claire Williams join the Claire Balding Show.
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