figurines & knick knacks
chinas cosmopolitan empire the tang dynasty
p the tang dynasty is often called china s golden age a period of commercial religious and cultural connections from korea and japan to the persian gulf and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity . mark lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under chinese rule painting and ceramic arts flourished women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy and china produced its finest lyric poets in wang wei li bo and du fu . p the chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land . merchants from inner asia settled in the capital while chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world the beginning of a global diaspora . the emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of chinese imperial history . poems celebrated the glories of the capital meditated on individual loneliness in its midst and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars . p despite the romantic aura attached to the tang it was not a time of unending peace . in 756 general an lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century regional warlordism gripped many areas heralding the decline of the great tang .