Page 113 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

CHAPTER IV

THE SUNG 5R DYNASTY, 960-1279 A.D.

WITH the Sung dynasty firmly established in 960 a.d., the
Chinese Empire entered upon a long period of prosperity
rendered glorious by the cultivation of the arts of peace.
It is true that the boundaries of the Empire were contracted
and the Tartar tribes on the north-west had made good their
independence and remained a constant menace to the frontiers

of China. In 1127 the dam was broken and the desert warriors,

no longer to be kept in check by diplomacy or force, burst upon
Northern China and drove the peace-loving Sung from their

capital, the modern K'ai-feng Fu in Honan. The Emperor Kao
Tsung and his Court fled across the Yangtze to their new capital
at Hang Chou, where the dynasty continued under the name of

the Southern Sung untU 1279, The description given by Marco
Polo of Hang Chou, which he considered, even in 1280, to be
" beyond dispute the finest and the noblest city in the world,"
presents a wonderful picture of the refinement and luxury of the
Sung civilisation. The great city had its network of canals and

its twelve thousand stone bridges, its flourishing guilds of crafts-

men, its merchant princes who lived " nicely and delicately as

kings," its three hundred public baths of hot water, its ten
principal markets, its great lake lined with houseboats and barges,
and its streets thronged with carriages. The citizens themselves

were peaceful and orderly, neither wearing arms nor keeping them
in their homes, and their cordiality to foreigners was hardly less
than the good will and friendliness which marked their relations

to one another.

The conditions which produced such a community as this were
ideal for the development of literature and art, and the Sung dynasty
has been described as a prolonged Augustan age for poets, painters,
and art workers of every persuasion. It was, moreover, an age of

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