Tang Dynasty Cultural Brilliance: Chang’an, Poetry, Buddhism, and the Examination
The Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) is the most cosmopolitan, culturally creative, and politically powerful dynasty of imperial China. The Tang capital at Chang’an was the largest city in the world for much of the dynasty’s history, a hub of long-distance trade, religious exchange, and artistic production. The great Tang poets Li Bai and Du Fu are still counted as the two supreme names in Chinese poetry. The Buddhist establishment reached its largest size, and the civil service examination, restored under the Tang, became the principal route into the imperial bureaucracy. The Han golden age that preceded the Tang established the institutional and ideological foundations, and the late imperial dynasties of the Ming and Qing inherited the Tang’s cultural prestige.
This page treats the Tang cultural scene under four headings: Chang’an as a cosmopolitan capital, the great Tang poetry, the flourishing of Buddhism, and the civil service examination system.
Chang’an: The Cosmopolitan Capital
The Tang capital at Chang’an, on the site of modern Xi’an, was a planned city on a vast scale. The city was laid out on a regular grid of avenues and cross-streets, with a southern market district and a western market district serving as the commercial centers. The imperial palace complex, the Daming Palace, occupied the northeast of the city and was one of the largest palace complexes ever built. The Tang capital is the model for the later cities of Nara and Kyoto, both of which were planned on the Chang’an pattern. The architectural tradition of the Tang court is one of the great achievements of world urbanism.
At its height in the eighth century, Chang’an had perhaps a million inhabitants. The city was filled with foreign merchants, monks, and visitors: Sogdian bankers, Persian Nestorian Christians, and Buddhist monks from every part of Asia. Japanese and Korean embassies came in regular waves to study the Tang system. The history of Chinese culture in the imperial period treats the cosmopolitan scene of Tang Chang’an as a high point of world civilization.
The Great Tang Poets
Tang poetry is the permanent model of Chinese poetic ambition. The poetry of the Tang was collected and commented upon by every later dynasty. Three figures stand out: Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei.
Li Bai (701–762), known as the “Poetry Immortal,” was a wandering poet who wrote in a free, spontaneous style. His poems of wine, friendship, and natural beauty have been translated into every major Western language. Du Fu (712–770), the “Poetry Sage,” was a more formal poet whose long career traced the rise and fall of the Tang. His later poems, especially those of the An Lushan period, are masterpieces of social observation. Wang Wei (699–759), a Buddhist poet and painter, wrote the short landscape poems that are the high point of Tang nature poetry.
The full collection of the Quan Tang Shi, the “Complete Tang Poems,” contains over 49,000 poems by some 2,200 authors. The cultural and literary record of the Tang treats the poets and their context at greater length.
The Flourishing of Buddhism
The Tang was the great age of Chinese Buddhism. By the mid-eighth century, the Tang Buddhist establishment included perhaps 400,000 monks and nuns and tens of thousands of monasteries. The most important schools of Tang Buddhism were the Chan school (known in the West as Zen), which stressed meditation and direct experience, and the Pure Land school, which taught devotion to the Amitabha Buddha.
The Tang also saw the greatest translation project in the history of Chinese Buddhism. The monk Xuanzang (602–664) traveled to India in 629 CE and returned in 645 with hundreds of Sanskrit manuscripts. Working with a team of scholars in Chang’an, he translated 75 texts in 1,335 fascicles, including the Yogacara treatises that became the foundation of the Faxiang school. The history of Chinese philosophy describes the long impact of these translations.
The Buddhist establishment was not without its critics. In 845 CE, the Emperor Wuzong launched one of the great imperial persecutions of Buddhism, dissolving some 4,600 monasteries, returning perhaps 400,000 monks and nuns to lay life, and confiscating monastic lands. Buddhism recovered in the late Tang and Song, but the Wuzong persecution was a turning point.
The Civil Service Examination
The Tang civil service examination, restored and developed during the dynasty, became the principal path into the imperial bureaucracy. Examinations were held at three levels: the county-prefecture level, the ministry level, and the palace examination conducted by the emperor himself. The most successful candidates were celebrated as national heroes and given immediate high office. The history of imperial Chinese government treats the examination system in detail.
The examination had a transforming effect on Tang society. It created a meritocratic ideal, a long-running competition for status, and a common literary culture shared by the scholar-official class. The Tang examinations were the first sustained use of the examination as a major route to office, and every later dynasty inherited and refined the Tang model. The examination was finally abolished in 1905. The history of the major imperial dynasties treats the examination as one of the great institutional legacies.
The An Lushan Rebellion and the Later Tang
The Tang’s high point in the early eighth century was shattered by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755–763 CE. An Lushan, a Sogdian-Turkic general, marched on Chang’an with perhaps 150,000 soldiers. The emperor Xuanzong fled to Sichuan, the capital was sacked, and the dynasty entered a long period of crisis. The demobilized soldiers and the population displacement killed perhaps 36 million people. The Tang survived until 907, but the political authority of the central government was permanently weakened, and the frontier regions came under the control of regional military governors. The military history of the Tang period describes the strategic background.
The cultural and economic vitality of the Tang continued, however, even after the An Lushan crisis. The Southern Tang kingdom (937–975) and other regional states preserved Tang culture, and the Song that reunited the country in 960 inherited the Tang’s bureaucratic and cultural framework. The ancient imperial period and the Han golden age provided the institutional context on which the Tang built.
Painting, Calligraphy, and Music
Tang painting, calligraphy, and music all reached a high level of technical accomplishment. The painter Wu Daozi was famous for his dynamic Buddhist figures and his ability to complete a wall-sized painting in a single sitting. The calligrapher Yan Zhenqing, who lived through the An Lushan Rebellion, set a new standard for Tang calligraphy. The music of the Tang court was a cosmopolitan blend of Chinese, Central Asian, Indian, and Korean elements. The cultural and artistic achievements of the Tang are part of the larger story of imperial Chinese culture.
Legacy of the Tang
The Tang is, in the Chinese tradition, the dynasty of high culture. The phrase “the great Tang” (Dai Tang) became a synonym for grandeur and refinement, and the great Tang poets are still recited at meals, weddings, and official ceremonies. The history of imperial China treats the Tang as one of the three great golden ages, and the late imperial dynasties of the Ming and Qing explicitly invoked the Tang as a model of cosmopolitan empire.
The Tang is also a touchstone for thinking about what Chinese culture has meant. Its openness to foreign influence — Sogdian, Persian, Indian, Korean, Japanese — is often held up as an alternative to a more narrowly defined Chinese identity. Its poetry is the standard of the Chinese literary tradition. Its examination system set the institutional model for two thousand years.