All language subtitles for The Story of China The Golden Age BBC 720p EN

In the tenth century, China almost
broke apart forever in civil war.

The soldier poet Wang Renyu
witnessed

the destruction of his country.

"The barbarians have overthrown
the Tang Dynasty," he wrote.

"Our cities have been abandoned.
Our temple courtyards lie in ruin.

"China has entered a truly
dark time.

"But things cannot
go on like this forever.

"The way surely has not been
finally lost. I believe heaven will

"soon announce a new dynasty."

And in around the year 960,

it did.

In the West, we see history as
the rise

and fall of different civilisations.

In China, there's one civilisation,
which has gone through

cycles of order and disorder.

And in the Middle Ages, like Europe
after the Second World War,

the Chinese set out to build a brave
new world.

In the story of China, we've reached
the Song Dynasty.

We're in the city of Kaifeng
in the middle of China.

MAN SPEAKS CHINESE LANGUAGE
Mushroom!

Mushroom, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.

A thousand years ago, this was
the greatest

and most exciting place on Earth.

Its creativity and inventiveness
surpassed

and of course preceded
the European Renaissance.

In the Song Renaissance, the Chinese
set out to make the most

enlightened society on Earth,

with the best governance,

housing and food,

the best education and science.

And this is their story.

Since the great age of
the Tang Dynasty,

China had shrunk dramatically.

After 907, it fragmented into
16 dynasties

in a little over 50 years,

warlords fighting each other
for the Empire.

CEREMONIAL CRY

At this point, there was
no certainty

that China would ever be reunited.

But as it says in China's famous
novel,

The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms,

"It is a truth universally
acknowledged

"that everything long united will
fall apart

"and everything long divided will
come back together again."

The Song would transform Kaifeng

from a provincial backwater
into the greatest city on Earth.

And now it's rebuilding again.

After the struggles of
the 20th century,

today's Chinese people are
fascinated by the spectacle

of what their ancestors achieved

and they want to touch that time
again.

And as always in Chinese history,

great events were foretold by signs
and omens.

Here in Kaifeng, the most famous
tells of the birth of two brothers

who, like Romulus and Remus,

would become the first emperors
of the new dynasty.

Story goes like this -

at the time of chaos and war and
destruction,

after the fall of the Tang Dynasty,

a man called Chen Tuan fled to
the sacred mountain Huashan,

where he lived in a cave
and became a hermit.

And he acquired
prophetic visionary powers.

And one day he came off the mountain

and in the road he met a crowd
of refugees

and there was a poor man
carrying two baskets

on a pole on his shoulders.

And when the hermit looked into
the basket,

there were two baby boys,

but the hermit saw dragons

and he roared out with laughter.

And everybody said, "Why are you
laughing?" and he said,

"I never expected that
the Mandate of Heaven

"would come back to earth
so quickly."

Ah, great.

Ah, fantastic.

There's the surviving dragon,

the last dragon of
Twin Dragon Alley.

Any day now, Twin Dragon Alley
will be redeveloped

and soon only the memory
will remain.

But that's Kaifeng for you,
China's city of memory.

In 960, the older brother, Taizu,
announced the new dynasty, the Song.

And he made the capital here a vast
new metropolis of wood

and brick, thrown up in a feverish
construction boom.

This is Song building manual,

commissioned in the early
12th century.

If you are of a certain
social status

and if you can afford it

you can build your house according
to these...styles.

So this tells you how to build
a city, almost, doesn't it?

Well, for a city of over a million
people you would need

Iots of buildings.

Biggest city in the world, perhaps,
at that point?

Yes, definitely, at that time.

'And to go with the new buildings

'was a whole new conception of
city life.'

Kaifeng was a much more open city,

the lifestyle much more vibrant
than the Tang Chang'an.

All sorts of shops, all sorts
of restaurants, even fast food,

there's mention of fast food.

And there was no curfew.
That was, er, very important.

Before this, residents in the city,
these urban dwellers,

were supposed to stay in their own
wards after the bell.

But in Kaifeng they were allowed to
just flock to the markets

and...enjoy their time.

So all the pleasures of city life
really start to unfold at this time.

Yes.

So a new capital for a new age.

The largest city anywhere on Earth
until the 19th century.

And just like today's China,

the city became a magnet for people
flooding in.

In a few years, it went from
one square mile to 16.

Only a few ancient buildings
survive today above ground.

One of them is the famous
Iron Pagoda,

so called because of the metallic
sheen of its tiles.

We're out in the northeast corner
of the old city here.

The Iron Pagoda is on a bit
of raised ground in this corner.

The Emperor had built this
artificial mountain

called the Hill of Longevity.

Wonderful, these Chinese names,
aren't they?

Compared with Rome or
Constantinople,

very little survives
from Kaifeng's golden age.

And you can see why when you look
below the ground.

Down here is evidence of 20
devastating floods

of the Yellow River
since the Song Dynasty.

This pit is a metaphor
for the story of the city.

I've called Kaifeng
the city of memory,

China's capital of memory.

And in this pit underneath
the West Gate you can see why!

That is the Qing Dynasty city wall,

the 18th- and 19th-century
Qing Dynasty city wall.

And this smaller brickwork here,
the Ming Dynasty wall,

Tudor period - part of it
carries on down.

And the Song Dynasty city wall...

maybe 20 feet below the floor level
here.

It's an amazing thought, isn't it?

And the reason why?

That huge deposit of
Yellow River mud,

which is only a few miles
from the city.

These floods have been incredibly
destructive all the way

through Chinese history,
sweeping through the whole city,

destroying almost everything, even
in recent times - 1842, for example.

No wonder, then, that city has been
memorialised, if you like,

not in stone, not in
great buildings,

but in words and in paintings.

"A million people thronged these
streets," said a Song poet.

"There were restaurants as far as
the eye could see.

"Everywhere there was
music in the air.

"What would we give to see
that age again?"

But we CAN still see Song Kaifeng...

in China's most famous work of art.

As historical sources go,

this is one of the most fabulous
that exists in the world.

It's a scroll. It's nearly
20 feet long.

I'd need to unroll it across
the middle of the street

if we were going to do that.

It's simply a depiction of the city
as it was just before 1127

by a court painter, and it's
the life of the ordinary people.

There is nothing like this
in the whole of history.

It gives you the streets, the
alleyways, the hutongs, the shops.

The taverns and restaurants,
and all of them real places.

Mr Wang's house,

the Spice Shop,

Shenyang's Licensed Tavern.

Physician Zhou's Residence,

the Sugar Cane Shop,

Dr Yang's Clinic.

An amazing image of the sheer
vitality of Song Dynasty China.

Here, 400 years before
the European Renaissance

with its commitment to human values,
was a city dedicated to

the prosperity and wellbeing of
its people.

A city for the many,
not just the few.

Not kings or warriors or the Church,

but the lives of ordinary people.

It's an image of themselves
the Chinese have loved ever since.

So much so that they couldn't resist
bringing it back to life.

A journey back into a golden age,

as one citizen recalled.

"They were such happy times.

"So many people and an abundance
of things in the shops.

"The wonderful festivals.

"So many sights for the eye
to enjoy.

"Above all, I remember the humane
and congenial character of

"the citizens, always ready to help
a stranger."

A good time to live, do you think?
SHE SPEAKS CHINESE LANGUAGE

"The lamp-lit nights, the sounds
of music from the myriad taverns

"and wine bars.

"But you see then,
this was a time of peace."

There are many legacies of the Song
in today's China.

And one that's become celebrated
across the world

is Chinese cuisine.

The Song thought that people should
be well-fed

and eating became the great
social ritual it is today.

Chinese cooking, of course, is
one of the great

cuisines of the world and the oldest
cuisine in the world.

But the beginnings lie in
poor people's food.

Here they fed both the posh
and the working man.

People have had to get used to
making the best

out of whatever food source
they could lay their hands on

and to make it palatable.

But by the time of the Song Dynasty,
it's, well,

the first great restaurant culture
of the world.

The Chinese people by then
are the best-fed people

in the world, probably the best-fed
that had ever been in history.

And there's wonderful accounts of
the restaurant culture

of the time - 70 great
restaurants here in Kaifeng,

the waiters rushing from table to
table, taking the orders,

and rushing back from the hatch,

with three dishes of food down one
arm and 20 bowls down the other.

And never making a mistake, says
one contemporary.

And that restaurant culture
brings you etiquette,

how to behave at table,

how to be considerate
to your fellow diners,

not to rush, not to chew loudly,
to be careful

when you're all eating from
the same bowl.

And that in turn, of course, brings
you a kind of foodie culture.

They've got cookbooks
back in the Song Dynasty.

One of them has been reprinted
ever since, the last time in 2004.

Pure recipes from
the Mountain House Cookbook.

Oranges stuffed with crab meat.

Bean curd steamed with
hibiscus flowers.

And each one of these recipes
has got delightful

notes by the author telling you
where he first picked it up.

Take this one,

plum-blossom noodle-cake soup.

"I picked up this recipe
from an old scholar

"in the Zimou Mountains
on a beautiful snowy night,

"and whenever I taste it

"the exquisite moment comes flooding
back to me."

Let's just move some space.

'In a restaurant in old Kaifeng,
we asked the chef to make

'one of these 11th-century recipes -
adapted for the vegetarian.'

HE SPEAKS CHINESE LANGUAGE

There's a type of mushroom, pear,
and lotus seed.

Lotus seeds? Seeds, yeah.

So you mix mushrooms and fruit?
That's very interesting.

Cos they have this function of,
like, er...deflammation.

Oh, wow.

It's delicious.
SHE TRANSLATES

He says it's his pleasure.
Thank you. Great.

I'm going to finish this off,
if that's all right.

Is that all right?

LAUGHTER

The Mountain House Cookbook was
one of thousands of books

you could buy in Kaifeng.

Publishing boomed.

From vast imperial encyclopaedias to
poetry, history and ritual.

And self-help manuals

for the literate man and woman in
the street.

The Chinese had invented
woodblock printing back in the Tang,

one of many great inventions
with which they led the world.

And now in the Song they devised
moveable type too,

although that never
took off in the same way.

The first mention of this is
slightly after 1040 by a person

called Bi Sheng, using clay to print
with moveable typeset.

So each one of these
is a Chinese character

and they would form
part of a page in a frame. Yeah.

But it wasn't...taken up?

No.

The Chinese made this invention,
which has proved

so useful to the rest of the world,
but they didn't find it useful.

Why?

It has to do with the Chinese
characters,

because there are so many of them
and, erm...

Say if you look at this page,
almost every character is

a different one, so economically it
wasn't viable, it wasn't efficient,

especially compared to just using
a single woodblock print.

Too cumbersome for such a vast
range of characters? Yes.

'And you can see exactly why

'when East met West in the
20th century, with the typewriter.'

Each individual metal type is
a Chinese character.

You'd have to choose the right one,
by...navigating this.

And how many characters have they
got for this machine, then?

Probably about 2,000.

So how many do you need
to negotiate,

say, a newspaper in
modern China, then?

About 3,000 or 4,000
for the average.

So strangely enough, although this
seems very cumbersome,

to be carving woodblocks,

it's actually much more efficient.

'Especially if a book stays in print
for centuries, as they do in China.'

So tell us about the readership
in the Song, then?

Does reading percolate down into
ordinary people?

Well, of course there are the more
elite classes who...

who can read and who are
expected to read.

But definitely literacy is
spreading in the Song.

Even if they weren't able to
read themselves,

they would be easily able to find
someone who can do that for them.

One of the great things about
the Song Dynasty is the attention

to...what we would call,
I suppose, civic values.

They even publish books on old age.

This... You're not going to
believe this,

but this is a book about...
Well, it's called

How To Help Old People Live Better,
Longer And More Fulfilling Lives

and it was written in 1085

and it's gone through editions
in every dynasty of China ever since

and this is the latest
2013 printing.

How about that?

"Now, to care for old people,

"you have to look at the nature
of their whole life.

"Everybody has things that they
really like.

"Things that make them glad.

"Books and paintings, music.

"There are millions of things
that people like.

"If a person frequently seeks out
the things that they've loved

"all their life and focuses on
their essence

"and has these things around them,
it will give them endless joy

"and pleasure and their days
will be joyful."

And today's citizens still follow
the Song's self-help message.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so dancing is very good.

'So in its ideas about the good life

'the Song went beyond any earlier
civilisation -

'even the ancient Greeks.'

And in science, the list of their
inventions is incredible.

From gunpowder and blast furnaces

to the magnetic compass

and evolution theory.

The most famous scientist came from
a village down in Fujian

on the south coast.

Su Song. There he is.

One of the great polymaths of
the Song Dynasty,

and they don't come much more
poly than him.

He was an engineer, astronomer,
scholar and poet

but he also wrote treatises on
mineralogy and zoology and
pharmacology.

It's real left-brain/right-brain
stuff, isn't it?

But their education enabled them
to be both artistic

and scientific, endlessly creative
and endlessly curious.

He reminds you of some of the great

figures of the Renaissance
in Europe.

I suppose you could say that he's
the Chinese Leonardo,

but to put it more correctly,
Leonardo is the Western Su Song.

This is Su Song's pet project,
an astronomical clock.

His proud hometown has just rebuilt
a working replica.

45 feet high, its mechanism
a water clock,

driven by an endless chain drive.

Inside the clock, there had to be
a clock captain

standing like the captain on the
bridge of a boat 24 hours a day

and periodically topping
the water level up in the tanks.

CLUNK

WATER CASCADES
There you go.

Wonderful imagining this
in the middle of Kaifeng,

ringing out the hours
24 hours a day for the citizens

as they go about their business.

BELL CHIMES

It's like the Song Dynasty's
Big Ben.

Scientific exploration
thrived in the Song,

in part because there was no
theological straitjacket

holding back speculation on
the nature of time and the universe.

Look at this.

You see the goddess of mercy.
It's a real women's cult here.

Isn't this fantastic? It's a
people's temple, this.

Taoism and Buddhism were the
official cults of the Song Empire,

but religion wasn't
an area where the government

intruded into people's lives.

Though always watchful of
foreigners,

the Song, just like the Tang,
had many Muslim

and Christian communities,
which still survive.

And in Kaifeng so do the last of
the Chinese Jews.

MAN BLOWS SHOFAR

This is Chinese Rosh Hashanah.

Under the Song, the population of
China doubled.

100 million in the year 1000, it
was 200 million by the late 1200s,

more than a third
of the world's people.

And with a huge urban population,

just like the British in the
19th century, the Chinese invented

many games and sports, including
what they called "kick-ball".

We British, of course,
pride ourselves on having invented

the world's greatest game

and in the sense that the rules of
modern football

were established in Britain -

in Sheffield, to be precise,
in the 1860s - that's true,

but as usual in this story,
the Chinese got there first.

Football was massive in the Song
Dynasty, a thousand years ago.

SHE SPEAKS CHINESE LANGUAGE

So I suppose you could say,
as the Chinese would,

"Zuqiu hui jia le" -
football's coming home.

CROWD ROARS

It wasn't a mass sport, of course.
There was no such thing then.

But football in the Song was
a spectator sport

with clubs, handbooks, rules,
and fans.

STI RRI NG MUSIC PLAYS

The Emperor's not arrived yet!

WHISTLE BLOWS

COMMENTARY IN CHINESE LANGUAGE

Oh, wow!

Different ways of playing the game
in the Song Dynasty.

The favourite one, the goals were
posts about ten metres high,

coloured net hung between them

with a hole through which
you had to shoot the ball.

And of course, being China,
ethical conduct was vital.

In Song football, it was play up and
play the game.

Abusing the referee was
un-Confucian,

and professional fouls unthinkable.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Well, almost!

And football wasn't
just for the elite.

China was opening up socially,

and that went for government too.

There was definitely
a lot of social mobility

going on during the Song.

The social classes
were in flux in some sense.

People from all sorts of backgrounds

could engage more closely,

who were more sensitive towards
the social situation.

They became involved in
government too.

New schools for learning opened up

and...academies were established

as well, that sought to teach
the classics

and also to...foster good character.

It was the great age of Confucian
social values

and how they set about creating
that ethos is startlingly modern.

As you can see, it's freshers' week
here in Henan University in Kaifeng.

The story of universities goes back
a long way in China,

much further back than in the West.

And, amazingly, here in Kaifeng
in the 11th century

there was a national university.

In 1069, the Emperor expanded
the student body from 1,000

to more than 3,000.

They had financial support and board
and lodging.

And the big idea was to draw in
students from the provinces,

talented youngsters perhaps even
from middling or lower families,

to come into the metropolis
for the best education.

And the goal, as the Emperor put it
himself,

for the morality of the culture.

As educationalists say today,

the ethos is the thing.

For the examinations, the students
studied literature, history

and Confucian classics.

The Emperor and his advisers were
looking for

tomorrow's administrators to govern
a harmonious Confucian society.

There was a new class of literati
who previously, perhaps,

didn't have the chance to sit
through the examination system

but now they had.

Confucian teachings were really

at the core of these civil
examinations.

And because they had such
an important role to play

in those examinations

and that so many people took
examinations,

it meant that it was
a way for Confucian ideas to really

permeate into society.

You could say that it was
a meritocratic society

where excellence in learning was
really prized.

Meritocratic, but not universal.

Half of the population were excluded
from this educational revolution.

Women.

But ironically, it's through
the writings of a woman

that we get one of the best insights
into the world of the Song.

These students are studying
her work

in today's university in Kaifeng.

She's the poet Li Qingzhao.

Li Qingzhao.

She's one of China's greatest poets.

Her father had encouraged her to
write poetry from an early age

and attend male poetic gatherings.

And she was already famous and
in print when she was 17,

when she married a student from
the university here in Kaifeng.

And they spent a lot of time here in
the great old Buddhist temple

in the middle of town,

wandering its courtyards,

making rice-paper rubbings of
its inscriptions.

But recent feminist criticism
here in China

is giving us another view
of her altogether.

The strains within her marriage
in a society dominated by men,

the ambitions of a brilliant woman
to find a voice

that was not only interior and
personal, but public and political.

She was criticised by some
at the time for saying things,

for writing poetry.

Women were not supposed to
write poetry. This was a man thing.

And poetry was one of the major ways
of social interaction amongst men.

You would go and drink a cup of wine

and you would compose poetry
with each other.

You would say two lines of a poem

and I would give you
the next two lines.

You would create new poetry
in that way.

Women could do this,

but increasingly there were
courtesans who did this.

Respectable women didn't participate
with men doing it.

They still wrote, but we don't
have very much surviving.

A lot of women wrote poetry,
didn't they? A lot of women did
write poetry, yes.

Being published is a different
matter, perhaps. That's right, yes.

Paradoxical period for women,
isn't it, the Song?

You know, so many social advances,

women's voice appearing strongly,
perhaps, for the first time.

And yet, foot binding starting to
become widespread.

It's very mixed, because women
become crucial to this political

notion of loyalty, they have their
equal part to play in that.

But at the same time
they are also being...

Their rights that they have
previously had,

their economic rights, are being
taken away from them.

So women could be highly educated,
but to play their part

in male-led Confucian society,
women were to cultivate loyalty

to father, husband and state to
ensure national cohesion.

So wrote the leading conservative,
the historian Sima Guang.

But in the late 11th century,
right up to the top,

the old way of doing things was
challenged.

The leading light in the reformers
was a man called Wang Anshi,

a Southerner, who'd spent 20 years
in local government.

Ni hao.

Wang pushed reforms
across the board.

Fairer taxes, government loans
for the poor,

new degrees in law and science.

Breaking down class barriers
in the name of economic efficiency.

With growing threats
on its frontiers,

the state had an enormous
defence budget,

and Wang thought a more open society
would make the economy work better.

The Confucian classics, the old way
of doing things,

were put in their place.

They had to have practical
application.

And of course the old-fashioned
Confucian bureaucrats were
horrified.

And they took their case
to the Emperor,

here in the palace in Kaifeng.

The Emperor favoured the reformers,

but the conservatives in his council
saw root-and-branch reform

as potentially destabilising in
uncertain times.

In the winter of 1070, the great
conservative opponent

of the reforms, Sima Guang,
petitioned the Emperor.

He said, "We don't need
these new laws.

"What we need are good men
trained in the old ways."

"Look at the last 1,500 years of
Chinese history," said Sima Guang.

"You'll see the periods of peace
add up to only 300 years, if that.

"This shows how hard it is
to create order

"and how hard you must work
to keep it once you've got it."

And he ended with this -

"I fear, at the moment, that our
house may not be able

"to shelter our nation
from the rains

"and the storms that are to come."

It's one of the great what-ifs
of history.

At this point, towards 1100,

China could have become the first
modern society,

with the most egalitarian system of
government anywhere

before modern times.

Why that didn't happen

was due to events beyond their
control

which would eventually
overwhelm them.

The last 50 years of Song China
saw climate change and famine

and the incessant drumbeat of
foreign armies on the frontiers.

The Mandate of Heaven
was not yet lost,

but the harmony had gone.

A contemporary wrote,

"The problem was the wasting of
national resources.

"Public opinion wanted defence
spending,

"not grand building projects."

The achievements of the Song Dynasty
for 100 years were

amazing across every field of human
endeavour.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE MUSIC IS PLAYED

In 1101, the last great emperor of
the united

Northern and Southern Song came to
the throne, Huizong.

He was a Renaissance prince,
surrounded himself

with poets and thinkers.

He was an accomplished painter.

In his wonderful gardens, he
listened to symphonies

by Buddhist musicians.

But as he plunged deeper into

his introverted speculations

about sacred kingship, he lost touch
with reality.

When much harder choices
were needed,

choices about military expenditure
and defence budgets...

..and deployment of armies,

as the barbarian forces gathered on
the frontier.

And when the crisis came, as he
himself admitted,

"I myself was mediocre,
and in the end I failed the nation."

The Song shared the East Asian
landmass with many other states,

and in the 1120s Jurchen invaders
swept down from the north.

In 1127, the Siege of Kaifeng began.

It's one of the greatest,

most poignant tragedies in Chinese
history.

Just imagine the scene.

Thick snow swirling down
from the sky.

On the horizon, the gate towers of
the outer city are on fire

and many of the houses are burning.

And here inside the walls of the
inner city are hundreds of thousands

of terrified citizens of Kaifeng,
still resisting, hopelessly.

The food's run out, the markets
are empty.

There are rumours, even, that people
are eating human flesh.

And the government now try to
buy off the invaders,

but they've no cards left to play.

When they give gold, the invaders
want more.

They want millions of ounces of
gold and silver.

They want precious silks and
fine wines.

They want antiques, temple bells and
ritual vessels.

They want the musical instruments
played by the imperial orchestra.

And they want people,
they want craftsmen,

but especially they want women.

They want the ladies-in-waiting
from the imperial palace,

they want the 1,500 female musicians
who used to

play before the Emperor,
they want the wives and daughters

of the royal family and the
courtiers and the leading citizens,

all to be delivered
to their great camps

to the north
and south of the city.

And of course many of those women
committed suicide rather than go.

And so the city which symbolises
the very best that civilisation

had yet achieved on Earth
was brought to nothing.

In a bitter poem on the government's
incompetence, Li Qingzhao

reflected on the catastrophe.

WOMAN READS I N CHINESE LANGUAGE

"An age of glory
passed like a lightning flash.

"The troops of
the Northern Barbarians

"appeared as if they had
dropped from heaven.

"Tatar horses paraded
in front of your banqueting hall

"and trampled pearls and emeralds
into the fragrant dust.

"What a waste of time it was

"for great artists to carve your
name into polished cliffs.

"The Mandate of Heaven
passed from you but you didn't see.

"Times change and power passes.

"It is the pity of the world."

HE SPEAKS IN CHINESE LANGUAGE

The Emperor, Huizong, and thousands
of his courtiers were seized

and taken north, where
they died in captivity.

But his brother fled
beyond the reach of the invaders

across the Yangtze river and vast
numbers of refugees followed.

You get a great sense of a Chinese
medieval village from here,
don't you?

The big difference would be
that today

the houses are made
out of brick and concrete.

Then, they would have been
wooden-framed, wooden-fronted houses

Iike those old ones over there.

And the people here were not
scholars and bureaucrats -

they were boatmen
and dockers and warehousemen.

And among the millions who
fled south was the poet Li Qingzhao.

"Those who lived in the west of
the Yangtze river basin fled east.

"Those in the north fled south.

"Those in the hills
fled to the cities.

"Those in cities fled to the hills."

Hello.

"And in the end there was no-one
who was not uprooted.

"And I myself, Li Qingzhao,
fled upstream,

"crossed the river near the rapids
and got to Jinhua.

"There I found a place to live
in the house of the Qin family.

"There, after all the terror
and all the hardship,

"I found some peace of mind."

MUSIC AND SINGING

And so the patient
and long-suffering Chinese people

set out once more, as they have
so often,

to rebuild, refusing to
give up on the Song dream.

And it was here in the South
in the 12th century that Chinese

civilisation was reborn,
in what we call the Southern Song.

Up to this point,
the South has been politically,

and to some degree economically,

somewhat more peripheral
to the North,

but now it's the moment
when that completely changes.

More and more people are settling
in the South, more and more

commerce and so on is developing in
the South, and the economy booms.

China is, in a sense, moving.

It's moving from this very
northern orientation,

a northern east-west orientation,
to a much more compact

southeastern orientation that tends
to be how we think of China now.

The site they chose for
the new capital

was a then-unimportant place
called Hangzhou,

standing on the West Lake,

one of China's loveliest spots.

The Chinese have a proverb -

in heaven there is paradise,

but here on Earth there are Suzhou
and Hangzhou.

In fact,
the story goes Hangzhou was chosen

because of the beauty
of its landscape.

And here they set out to recreate
the lost city of dreams.

There's a wonderful
Chinese description from that time,

which gives you a sense
of the landscape that has enchanted

Chinese poets and painters for
more than a thousand years.

Like a camera panning along the
horizon from the blue grey hills,

across the tranquil
surface of the lake,

and there where the landscape
flattens,

glittering like fish scales,

the brightly glazed tiles
of a myriad rooftops.

Here, there was every single
conceivable amenity of civilisation.

So in Hangzhou, Song civilisation
was restored -

from the people's culture to
practical government.

There were fire stations

and hospitals, old people's homes -
and even dance pavilions.

When the Italian Marco Polo
came here in the 13th century,

he called it the best city on earth.

There were shops selling beauty
products, make-up and face cream,

eyeliner, false hair.

And if shopping in Hangzhou
hadn't worn you out,

you could repair to teashops or
wine bars or storytelling houses

or huge public theatres.

And if that wasn't enough,

at the end of the evening you could
go to fabulously appointed,

exclusive hostess bars where the
most famous courtesans of the time

would serenade you with beautiful
music - there was even a gay club!

But to really understand
the remaking of the Song world,

you have to leave
the glitter of Hangzhou behind.

That's lovely.

Out in the countryside,
south of the river,

the Southern Song planted hundreds
of new towns and villages

to supply the capital
with food and coal and timber.

And here, at the grassroots,

they passed on the cultural
ethos of the Song.

Even now in the old county towns

you can meet descendants
of the governing class.

Ni hao.

Hello!

Wow! Look at this.

'This is Qishan town,
an old Song trading place.'

Here in Mr Xie's crumbling family
house, the signboard proudly

salutes his ancestors who passed
the Song civil-service exams.

Hello, hello, hello, hello!
Hello, hello, hello, hello!

Let me just ask you about the sign
above - what does that say?

And despite all the upheavals
of the 20th century,

the old ideals are still passed on.

Upstairs in the altar room,

wooden plaques name the ancestors
stretching back a thousand years.

How many ancestors
are commemorated here?

Wow! So it's one of the biggest
family lineages in China?

So touching.

'Across the generations, the thread
connecting the living with

'the dead, the Song ethos of virtue,
duty and Confucian morality.'

In the 1100s, here in the South,
great thinkers like Zhu Xi

shaped the Confucian ethos of China
until today.

Zhu Xi wrote China's most
influential book after Confucius,

a handbook to family rituals.

It was said you could find one
in every home

in China in the 19th century.

It's about the mutual dependence
of family and ancestors.

As Zhu Xi said,
part of the state's effort

to guide and transform the people.

But the old cycles of Chinese
history now returned to haunt them.

In the 13th century, the world was
turned upside down by the Mongols.

Led by Genghis Khan,

their armies swept west as far
as the walls of Vienna.

They overran Northern China,

creating the most extensive empire
in history.

And then they gradually
spread their power into the lands

of the Southern Song
by land and sea...

..until the last terrible battle.

It was March 19th 1279.

Dark day in the story of China.

We're here almost
exactly on the anniversary

and it was a day just like this,
with rain and drizzle.

By the evening, you couldn't
see the far shore.

The Song commanders had not
defended the narrows here,

so the Mongol fleet was able to
sail through into the lagoon.

And there the Song navy faced them.

They had about 1,000 ships

Iashed together
to form a floating fortress...

..their decks protected by wet mud
to stop the effects

of the fire projectiles
from the Mongol catapults.

"The air was full of fiery traces
of the Mongol firebombs."

But when the tide rose, the Mongols
were able to encircle the Song fleet

and in the end the battle was lost
and the young Emperor was trapped.

And then the Emperor's loyal
minister, Lu Xiufu,

made a famous speech to
the little boy -

"The affairs of our state have come
to this,

"but we must not disgrace
the nation."

And he took the boy in his arms

and he jumped into the sea
to commit suicide.

The little boy's pet white parrot
began to screech

The little boy's pet white parrot
began to screech

and flap its wings
until it overbalanced the cage

and fell into the water
after its master.

So ended the glory of the Song.

So in the later 13th century
China was defeated,

under alien rule,
shocked to the core.

The Mandate of Heaven was suspended
but it was not lost.

For China's cycles of order
and disorder will continue.

Another great age will arise,
as in China it always does.

One of the great eras of high
civilisation in world history.

But they won't follow the brilliant
experiments of the Song

on the path to modernity.

Instead, the experience of defeat
will give birth

to a new kind of despotism.

The new dynasty will be
the Bringers of Light...

..the Ming.