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00:04China, 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
00:21Europe 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.
00:35I'm in Xi'an, the capital of the Tang, which 1300 years ago was the greatest and most cosmopolitan
00:41city on Earth. And what made it great was not only its economic and cultural power, its
00:49sense of its own identity, but its openness to other cultures.
00:55Standing 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
01:13a golden age. In the story of China, we've reached the Tang Dynasty.
01:17And that's the tale of this tale of a new character of the whole world stage, the
01:54It's often said that in history, China has been a closed civilisation, introverted,
02:01cutting itself off from the world.
02:07And there have been times when it's looked that way, but since prehistory, China has
02:12never been isolated and has thrived on contact.
02:18And the Tang Dynasty was a great age of international connection.
02:22At that time, vast numbers of foreign peoples poured into China with exotic goods, foods
02:30and ideas and even new religions.
02:33And 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 lines.
02:47We call it the mainland routes connecting 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.
03:12The magic of the Silk Road, magic of Central Asia, there's Han Chinese, there's Uighurs everywhere.
03:21There's a guy from Kyrgyzstan, you can tell by his hat, just like it would have been in ancient
03:26times.
03:26You would have seen Arabs and Persians, probably Indians, along with the Han Chinese, on this
03:31very edge of, you know, Tang Dynasty China.
03:36The Greek historian Polybius has a very interesting remark about this.
03:39He's writing in the 100s BC.
03:42He says that in ancient times, the histories of Europe and Asia were completely separate,
03:49they ran their own way.
03:51But from our age onwards, the history of Europe began to interact and engage with the history
03:57of Asia, and the history of Asia with that of Europe.
04:02You could say it's the beginning of universal history, and it's happening in the Tang Dynasty.
04:12But in history, when two civilisations 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 shed your own
04:30preconceptions, and in the 7th century, the Chinese were confident enough to do that, to be changed
04:40by the experience of the other.
04:48The story begins at the Chinese end of the Silk Road in the old city of Luoyang.
04:56Luoyang was the ancient capital of the Zhou Dynasty for 500 years, and for those centuries,
05:03its poets and scholars had praised it as a place of great culture.
05:07It was the real heart of China, they said, in the middle of the middle plane of the Middle Kingdom.
05:15And 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, a time when poetry came
05:39out of the court into the streets, a witness to the times, expressing the human condition
05:45as never before.
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 and
06:08no-one notices.
06:09Isn't that great?
06:13So it's a place rich in culture, rich in trade and merchants and interested in foreigners.
06:23And 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, the Buddha, the foreigner who most fascinated
06:38the Chinese through the whole of their history.
06:42The adoption of this Indian religion would leave its mark on the very DNA of Chinese civilisation.
06:49What 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 devotion,
07:05and 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.
07:24How 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.
07:45The emperor had a dream, and in the dream, a strange man appeared to him, with his skin
07:55the colour of gold, framed by the sun and moon and stars.
08:04And the court astrologers and diviners interpreted the dream, that this man had come from the
08:14west, and it must be the Buddha himself.
08:19The emperor was fascinated and organised an expedition.
08:22Eighteen courtiers and scholars, with all their attendants, journeyed out to the west to find
08:28out more.
08:30They got as far as Afghanistan, and there, in a Buddhist monastery, they met two Indian monks,
08:36who agreed to come back with them to China.
08:43They came back here, and were established in this monastery, the White Horse Pagoda, after the white horses that
08:49they rode.
08:50And 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.
09:04It's not the first exchange between India and China, but from that moment onwards, the dialogue
09:10of civilisations will be continuous.
09:17Now, the story moves on in time, to the year 600.
09:22In the wider world, the Roman Empire has fallen, Byzantium is flowering, and in China, the mandate
09:28of 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
09:44in Chinese history, and his name was Xuanzang.
09:54Xuanzang must have known this place very well from childhood, and known all the stories,
10:00especially about the two strangers who'd come from India.
10:03I was inflamed by a passionate curiosity, he says, about the Buddha and about the origins
10:09of the faith, and I applied for a foreign travel permit several times, to no avail, perhaps
10:16because I was a nobody.
10:18And in the end, I took matters into my own hand, and I left in secret for India.
10:30He was 26 years old, and his journey would change the course of Chinese civilisation.
10:38It's a story that's fascinated me over the years, travelling in his footsteps between
10:43China and Central Asia, and across Afghanistan into India.
10:48At that time, Xuanzang said, the Tang were new on the throne, China's frontiers didn't
10:54extend far, and there was a ban on foreign travel.
10:57At 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
11:09characters.
11:13The Tang Monk and his crazy companions, the lustful Piggy, the dim-witted Sandy, and above all,
11:25the faithful monkeys.
11:30All of them changed by their magical encounters along the Silk Road.
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.
11:59On the real journey, Xuanzang tells of oceans of sand and the exotic peoples whose lands he
12:05passed through.
12:07He said, my fellow Buddhists tried to persuade me not to risk my life further, he said.
12:12But I must reach the West.
12:15If 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 play it out in the villages.
12:40And the city storytellers say that to tell the tale in full would take 110 days.
12:50Anna
13:09She
13:22So, today is one of the great myths of Chinese culture.
13:27A strange and wonderful afterlife for a real Tang monk.
13:37Swansang is one of those rare people who turn up in history.
13:43Visionary, great scholar,
13:48and yet possessed of incredible physical toughness and bravery and stamina.
13:58After three years and nearly 5,000 miles, he says,
14:02we crossed the great snowy mountains and came down into India.
14:12He crossed the river Indus and entered the plains of India
14:16with their teeming kingdoms and cities.
14:26He travelled with Buddhist pilgrims down the Grand Trunk Road to the river Ganges.
14:45And finally, he reached Bodh Gaya and the sacred Bodhi tree,
14:50where a thousand years before the Buddha had sat in meditation
14:54and gained enlightenment.
15:00And when I saw it, Xuanzang says,
15:04I lay on the ground and shed many tears.
15:10He stayed in India for ten years studying the Buddha's teachings,
15:14his noble truths about the human condition.
15:20And then he set off home to take them back to the Chinese people,
15:24to fire their imaginations as his story has ever since.
15:32I'm Xiao Yunhao.
15:34Four-year-old Xiao Yunhao is hoping to be one of the next generation
15:39of monkey storytellers.
15:40Mario Everyone was going to pour tea
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16:22The 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 Xuanzang were, welcome back.
16:55But you never asked permission to go.
16:58Well, said Xuanzang, 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.
17:20He's supposed to be very good looking, which certainly soot him in good stead.
17:24He was a very good looking man.
17:28I think it's difficult to underestimate how much Xuanzang really aroused people's interest in it,
17:36because 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
17:44with some work.
17:53It was my life's task, Xuanzang said, to bring the Buddha's teachings to the people of China for the benefit
18:01of generations to come.
18:05The Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an 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?
18:19Yeah.
18:20This is the language of South India and Sri Lanka.
18:44It must make you feel very good.
18:52I'm very proud to be monks here.
18:55Go ahead.
19:03The Emperor now commissioned Xuanzang to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese.
19:12In the history of civilisation, it's a project comparable to the Arabic translations out of Greek.
19:21Or the Bible from Greek into Latin.
19:29With the permission of the Emperor, he got quite a team together.
19:33He 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.
19:47People who tried to put things into Chinese at the time.
19:51It 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.
20:08And 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.
20:23He had to spend all his time at court trying to fulfil the Emperor's need for conversation.
20:28He was a man who was consumed by curiosity.
20:33The Emperor himself said that the scriptures of Buddhism are as unfathomable as the depths of the sea or the
20:42height of the sky.
20:44In comparison, the teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu and the nine schools are just a single island in a
20:51great ocean.
20:56The Emperor was so impressed by his bearings, his intelligence, that he asked him to hang up his Buddhist robe
21:03and to become his prime minister, help me run the country.
21:08And Xuanzang refused him. He said,
21:11It'd 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.
21:39Xuanzang died in 664.
21:42His ashes are buried in the little monastery of Xinjaosu, near Xi'an.
21:48Spared 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.
22:02Over 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.
22:22For me, it's almost a homage to a fellow traveller.
22:26He travelled most of his route through Xinjiang, the northwest frontier of Pakistan and all the way across India to
22:32Patna.
22:33And to think he did most of that on foot.
22:44Here's Xuanzang, the great traveller.
22:49I can't believe that he had sandals from 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.
23:06Of course, actually, he had all that stuff in cases.
23:09It's a symbolic picture.
23:11And finally, the lovely touch here, a lantern to illuminate his journey at night.
23:26After 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, are 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.
23:56He 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.
24:31A great while has elapsed since we were parted, he writes, which has only increased my admiration for you.
24:43I'm sending you my very best wishes.
24:49Of the works that we brought back from India, I've already translated 30 and two more will be finished by
24:57the end of the year.
25:01And there's one more thing.
25:06On my way back from India, I lost a horse load of manuscripts fording 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
25:19to me.
25:21This is all for now.
25:25Best wishes.
25:27The monk, Swan San.
25:43In the seventh century, Xi'an was the greatest city in the world.
25:48Half a million people where the biggest European city had only a few thousand.
25:56It 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 board.
26:25It's about five miles square and we're just here at this corner.
26:33Tang Xi'an was strictly regulated.
26:36That 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.
26:47So 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.
27:02There was some mansions of court musicians, a princess lived down the road.
27:10It looks like you can still buy some of their garden ornaments, doesn't it?
27:17The city was low rise.
27:19Palaces, residential quarters, gardens.
27:22Almost every ward had Buddhist and Taoist temples.
27:26The temple of the eight immortals.
27:27Hello.
27:27You see all the things for temples here.
27:31Incense.
27:32That's because, right back to the Tang dynasty, there was a huge temple in this area.
27:40And it's still a Taoist temple today, the temple of the eight immortals.
27:48There you go.
27:50The temple of the eight immortals.
27:56The theatre quarter and red light districts were here.
28:00The hostels for candidates for the civil service exams.
28:03And all tastes were catered for.
28:08Fortune tellers.
28:10Ancient Chinese craft.
28:16Later, 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,
28:34but 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.
28:47Much later, of course, Ming dynasty.
28:49But 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.
29:01So the 600 beats of the drum, you had to be back home.
29:04.
29:16In the 7th century, the West Market was the Central Asian Quarter.
29:21Here were the Silk Road merchants, Uyghurs and Persians,
29:24and they brought all their exotic foods with them.
29:29Cherries, barberries, apricots, peaches from Afghanistan.
29:38Xi'zi.
29:44Oh, my God.
29:47I'm coming back there.
29:49Beautiful.
29:50Xi'zi.
29:56Fizzing with energy, the capital city matched the ambitions of the Emperor Taizong himself.
30:02In 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.
30:24I'm a great admirer of Li Shimin 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.
30:44It was Taizong who decided that the Silk Road
30:47should be brought under the umbrella of Chinese civilisation.
30:53Only a few years after Xuanzang made his journey west,
30:57Chinese armies marched in his footsteps.
31:01The Tang emperors sent their armies up the Silk Route
31:05here into Central Asia and they captured the great city of Gaocheng here in 642.
31:13And you could say that the modern idea of a greater China,
31:18including all these territories,
31:20can be traced back to that time and this place.
31:30The 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.
31:53It was now.
32:00Driven by a thriving economy and a rising population,
32:03this 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
32:16between the 600s and the 900s is the shift to the South.
32:22At 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,
32:38and 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,
32:48and 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,
32:58and the Yangtze River going from the west to the east.
33:01the number one city of the Tang dynasty in trade, Yangzhou.
33:23If Xi'an was the centre of the imperial administration,
33:27Yangzhou was China's commercial heart.
33:32It'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
33:48was one of China's great practical achievements, the Grand Canal.
34:00Built at the start of the 600s, the 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.
34:22It'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?
34:30Wow.
34:34It took five 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 lock.
34:51On the up is number three, and the middle is number two,
34:57and the behind is number one.
35:00Mainly carrying heavy material.
35:05Coal.
35:06Coal.
35:08Building 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 seventh 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.
35:51And standing at the intersection of China's waterways,
35:55Yangzhou became a new kind of city.
35:59It's the first sign of the beginning of the modern.
36:08The city never slept.
36:12It'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
36:23was able to keep moving through the city till well after midnight.
36:28So Tang dynasty Yangzhou was always open for business.
36:35And so too, of course, was the entertainment industry,
36:39the taverns and music bars and the brothels,
36:43described with delicate euphemisms in Tang dynasty poetry
36:48as 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.
37:05A Yangzhou dream.
37:20And as the south grew rich,
37:23they looked for new outlets for international trade,
37:26not only by land but by sea,
37:29all the way to the Persian Gulf.
37:33So here in the south, in the Tang dynasty,
37:36we've got the beginnings of what I suppose
37:39we could call the maritime Silk Road.
37:44Long-distance international trade organised by merchants
37:49here in cities like Quenzhou.
37:52And they're selling very top-end stuff,
37:55silks and fine cloths and exotic tableware.
37:58They're selling mass-produced ceramics
38:02designed with the Western consumer in mind.
38:05And they're also selling what will become
38:07the most popular drink in the world, tea.
38:16Tea 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 have been published
38:28on its beneficial effects.
38:30It's never looked back.
38:36They exported silk too,
38:39coveted since Roman times by Westerners,
38:42who were prepared to pay jaw-dropping prices
38:46for garments fit for an emperor.
38:49This is, you 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 in world history.
39:03But 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
39:15to the imperial factories,
39:18and from everyday ceramics
39:20to 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.
39:40They 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
39:56in 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,
40:09all roads led to Xi'an.
40:12And if you want a symbol of the age,
40:15just 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.
41:02Islam also came to China in the Tang, peacefully,
41:06which was not always the case.
41:08in history.
41:11We believe during the Prophet Muhammad's time,
41:14peace about him, encourage our ancestors to learn
41:17science and technology to 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.
41:52And this time, Tang Dynasty, China was the centre of the world.
41:58Xi'an was the centre of the world, I suppose.
42:00The super power.
42:01The super power.
42:02The super power.
42:09To welcome an alien religion would hardly have been possible in the West
42:14or the Islamic world before modern times.
42:19It shows that while the Chinese believed in the superiority of their civilisation,
42:26they also knew there were many paths to enlightenment.
42:32That all knowledge was useful in understanding the cosmos
42:37and 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.
42:50It'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.
43:14Let'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.
43:29In 635, it says,
43:31a wise man from the West,
43:33perhaps from Persia, called Rabban Abraha,
43:37decided to bring the Christian scriptures to China.
43:41Observing 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.
44:10The way for humanity,
44:13at different times and different places,
44:16did not have the same name.
44:19And the great sage,
44:21at different times and different places,
44:24was not in the same human body.
44:27Over history,
44:29heaven ordained that true religion
44:30would be established in different countries
44:33and 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 be propagated throughout the Empire.
44:55But the story of China is one of cycles of creation and destruction.
45:02And in the next century,
45:04the 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,
45:26Lee Bai.
45:28Last year, says Lee Bai,
45:30we were fighting out to the North beyond the Great Wall.
45:34And this year,
45:36we're fighting far out in the West,
45:37on the Kashgar River.
45:40We've washed our blades in the streams of Parthia,
45:44and grazed our horses amid the snows of Tianshan.
45:48There it is.
45:50There's Tianshan.
45:52What a place to imagine it,
45:53here in Zhao He,
45:55Tang Dynasty garrison town,
45:57with its watch tower and its beacon platform.
46:00But, says Lee Bai,
46:02the beacon fires are always burning.
46:05The marching and the fighting never stops,
46:07and nor does the dying.
46:09You should know that the sword is a cursed thing,
46:12that the wise man uses only if he must.
46:26Out in these vast expanses,
46:28the Tang Empire was overstretched.
46:35And 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.
47:27The oasis of Tu Fan was one of the Tang garrison towns
47:32out in the Western deserts.
47:35So, when Lee Bai writes his poem about fighting in the West,
47:40this area he's talking about.
47:41Yes, I think so, yes.
47:44In about 755,
47:46because of the rebellion of An Lushan and Xisiming,
47:50the central government became much weaker,
47:52so the station troops were returned to inland China
47:56to fight against the army of the An Lushan and Xisiming.
48:00An Lushan, yeah, so this was a very big shock to me.
48:03Yeah, before Lord.
48:06An Lushan, a bogey man who chilled hearts back in Xi'an.
48:13Far to the northeast, he gathered armies to take revenge
48:16after the emperor had killed his son.
48:21At home, the dynasty had lost touch with the people.
48:25The tombs of the 8th century royals near Xi'an
48:28show their pastimes and pleasures, polo and hunting,
48:33and courtly parties, oblivious to the gathering storm.
48:40These are wonderful images outside the tomb chamber.
48:44They're, um, courtly ladies, just attendants.
48:49In their stylish fashions, they could be, uh,
48:53fin de siècle Paris, couldn't they?
48:55Central Asian fashions.
48:57These are the, uh, the vogue in the early 700s.
49:04The faces are so animated, aren't they?
49:06You can almost imagine their conversations.
49:08The gossip, the rumours.
49:12The courts that were seething with anxiety.
49:18I'm afraid we Chinese never managed to live more than 50 years
49:22without some terrible cataclysmic event.
49:25The cycles of Chinese history.
49:27That's right.
49:27And it's been a particularly good period up until the emperor,
49:33uh, the brilliant emperor,
49:34began allegedly to have, to love his concubine, uh, Yang Guifei,
49:40the precious concubine, too much.
49:42And he left quite a lot of the, uh, the work of governing the country
49:46to various people, especially to this concubine's family and so on,
49:51which was absolutely disastrous.
49:54The story goes that the emperor sent his men over the land
49:57to find the most beautiful woman in China.
50:02They failed, of course.
50:04But then, when he was bathing here in the hot springs,
50:07he saw the 18-year-old daughter of a high official.
50:14The warm water running down her glistening, jade-like body,
50:19as the poet Bai Juyi tells the story.
50:22Hanhuang Zhongse.
50:24The emperor had dreamed of a beauty who could topple an empire.
50:31Meanwhile, a girl in the Yang family came of age.
50:36And when she smiled,
50:38she could melt the heart with a single glance.
50:42And from that day,
50:43the emperor missed every morning court.
50:50But then, one day,
50:52the ground was shaken by the war drums of revolt.
50:57An Lushan came in with his Tibetans, went straight to Chang'an.
51:03Soldiers carried the emperor and his favourites out of the capital overnight.
51:09It was so desperate and emergency.
51:11But when they got into the hills,
51:13because he was making for Sichuan,
51:15which was hilly and where he thought he would be safe,
51:19his bodyguards, a small group of people,
51:23rebelled and said they were not going any further
51:25as long as the emperor had this favourite and favourites with him.
51:29And the favourites had to be slaughtered.
51:37Among them was the Lady Yang,
51:41strung up on a tree on a silk cord.
51:48The great rebellion of the An Lushan 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
52:07and afterward, 35 million people were missing.
52:12As government broke down, eight years of horror unfolded.
52:17It was a national catastrophe,
52:19described by China's greatest poet, Du Fu,
52:23in lines remembered ever since by the Chinese people
52:26in times of trouble.
52:29Guo Po shan he zai.
52:32Chengchun cao mu shen.
52:35Gan shi hua jian lei.
52:38Guo Po, just two words.
52:40It means the state has been demolished
52:43and it doesn't exist anymore.
52:45There's no state left.
52:46But shan he zai, the mountains and the river, still remain.
52:53In all the 3,000 years of Chinese poetry,
52:57the world's oldest living poetic tradition,
53:00it's Du Fu, the poet of this terrible time,
53:03who is their most loved,
53:05because he spoke in the people's voice.
53:12He's still part of the school syllabus today,
53:14so every Chinese child knows how the tongue fell.
53:18Hi, hello.
53:20Not from their history class, but from poetry.
53:23Oh, very good, you speak English.
53:25Wonderful, wonderful.
53:26And here at the secondary school in Yangshu, outside Luoyang,
53:29they've an extra reason to know all about it.
53:32This is the tomb here?
53:33Yes.
53:35Because Du Fu's grave is in the school grounds.
53:39He wasn't famous when he died.
53:41The inscription says...
53:45The tomb of Mr Du,
53:47Government Deputy Irrigation Inspector.
53:52Terrific.
53:53Wonderful, wonderful.
54:03As the tongue world collapsed, one last brief poem by Du Fu
54:07tells how he met again, south of the river,
54:11a famous musician, once high in the king's favour.
54:14Make sure to share his review,
54:19If you are
54:21all white,
54:28the warm weather comes at오�110.
54:40Ho feng qi
54:46Ruo hua shi jie, yu feng jun
54:59Qi Wang jai yi shun chang jiang
55:03Who is the prince of the Qi, Qi Wang?
55:07Does anybody know?
55:08Is he a big important person?
55:10I know Qi Wang is the brother of the emperor Tang Shenzong
55:15He's the brother of the emperor?
55:17Yes
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
55:44Ruo 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?
56:03Anybody?
56:03I think it means you know the flowers is falling down and a period of the season is gone
56:10And it also means the Tang dynasty is gone
56:14And in the same time he meets his old friend
56:18And the old memories, the beautiful memories is back
56:22And he feels very sad
56:23So falling flowers is not just blossom falling
56:27It's a feeling of melancholy in the heart
56:29And the Tang dynasty is falling
56:32There is a mood of autumn and sadness
56:35And he meets the man who was once this great figure
56:39Such a simple poem isn't it?
56:41Just four lines and yet it's full of fantastic ideas
56:46Thank you for being patient
56:47Thank you
56:49Thank you
56:49Thank you
57:05Thank 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
57:24In the end the Tang lose their nerve and start to look inwards
57:30In the 840s they even launch a persecution of Buddhism
57:34Now a symbol of un-Chinese ideas
57:38And so the mandate of heaven was lost
57:42But as the Buddha had said
57:44And the Chinese have always known too well
57:47All things must pass
57:53On the 1st of June 907
57:56The last Tang emperor abdicated
57:59Bringing to an end an age of amazing creativity
58:06An age by which the Chinese still define themselves today
58:10Time in which Xi'an here rivaled and then surpassed Baghdad and Constantinople
58:17As a city of the world
58:21For a time China will plunge into anarchy
58:24But a new age of greatness will soon arise
58:28As in China it always has
58:31As in China it always has
58:58You