1 00:00:02,360 --> 00:00:07,840 In the tenth century, China almost broke apart forever in civil war. 2 00:00:16,360 --> 00:00:19,040 The soldier poet Wang Renyu witnessed 3 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:21,600 the destruction of his country. 4 00:00:24,800 --> 00:00:28,600 "The barbarians have overthrown the Tang Dynasty," he wrote. 5 00:00:28,600 --> 00:00:33,280 "Our cities have been abandoned. Our temple courtyards lie in ruin. 6 00:00:38,800 --> 00:00:42,120 "China has entered a truly dark time. 7 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:47,200 "But things cannot go on like this forever. 8 00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:55,520 "The way surely has not been finally lost. I believe heaven will 9 00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:57,920 "soon announce a new dynasty." 10 00:00:57,920 --> 00:01:00,520 And in around the year 960, 11 00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:02,360 it did. 12 00:01:36,120 --> 00:01:38,800 In the West, we see history as the rise 13 00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:42,160 and fall of different civilisations. 14 00:01:42,160 --> 00:01:45,480 In China, there's one civilisation, which has gone through 15 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:47,960 cycles of order and disorder. 16 00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:54,200 And in the Middle Ages, like Europe after the Second World War, 17 00:01:54,200 --> 00:01:57,640 the Chinese set out to build a brave new world. 18 00:02:02,400 --> 00:02:05,680 In the story of China, we've reached the Song Dynasty. 19 00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:13,160 We're in the city of Kaifeng in the middle of China. 20 00:02:14,880 --> 00:02:17,360 MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE Mushroom! 21 00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:20,080 Mushroom, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK. 22 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:23,040 A thousand years ago, this was the greatest 23 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:26,080 and most exciting place on Earth. 24 00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:29,120 Its creativity and inventiveness surpassed 25 00:02:29,120 --> 00:02:32,720 and of course preceded the European Renaissance. 26 00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:41,440 In the Song Renaissance, the Chinese set out to make the most 27 00:02:41,440 --> 00:02:43,360 enlightened society on Earth, 28 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:45,040 with the best governance, 29 00:02:45,040 --> 00:02:47,080 housing and food, 30 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:49,360 the best education and science. 31 00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:50,760 And this is their story. 32 00:02:52,720 --> 00:02:55,600 Since the great age of the Tang Dynasty, 33 00:02:55,600 --> 00:02:58,200 China had shrunk dramatically. 34 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:02,240 After 907, it fragmented into 16 dynasties 35 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:04,400 in a little over 50 years, 36 00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:07,360 warlords fighting each other for the Empire. 37 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:14,920 CEREMONIAL CRY 38 00:03:14,920 --> 00:03:17,280 At this point, there was no certainty 39 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:19,560 that China would ever be reunited. 40 00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:28,000 But as it says in China's famous novel, 41 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:30,200 The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, 42 00:03:30,200 --> 00:03:33,640 "It is a truth universally acknowledged 43 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:37,520 "that everything long united will fall apart 44 00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:41,120 "and everything long divided will come back together again." 45 00:03:45,560 --> 00:03:49,680 The Song would transform Kaifeng 46 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:53,640 from a provincial backwater into the greatest city on Earth. 47 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:00,400 And now it's rebuilding again. 48 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:03,320 After the struggles of the 20th century, 49 00:04:03,320 --> 00:04:07,200 today's Chinese people are fascinated by the spectacle 50 00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:09,800 of what their ancestors achieved 51 00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:12,360 and they want to touch that time again. 52 00:04:15,080 --> 00:04:17,880 And as always in Chinese history, 53 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:23,360 great events were foretold by signs and omens. 54 00:04:23,360 --> 00:04:28,400 Here in Kaifeng, the most famous tells of the birth of two brothers 55 00:04:28,400 --> 00:04:30,640 who, like Romulus and Remus, 56 00:04:30,640 --> 00:04:33,600 would become the first emperors of the new dynasty. 57 00:04:37,720 --> 00:04:40,080 Story goes like this - 58 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:44,080 at the time of chaos and war and destruction, 59 00:04:44,080 --> 00:04:46,640 after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, 60 00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:50,560 a man called Chen Tuan fled to the sacred mountain Huashan, 61 00:04:50,560 --> 00:04:53,080 where he lived in a cave and became a hermit. 62 00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:57,160 And he acquired prophetic visionary powers. 63 00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:01,040 And one day he came off the mountain 64 00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:04,600 and in the road he met a crowd of refugees 65 00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:07,440 and there was a poor man carrying two baskets 66 00:05:07,440 --> 00:05:09,200 on a pole on his shoulders. 67 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:12,280 And when the hermit looked into the basket, 68 00:05:12,280 --> 00:05:14,640 there were two baby boys, 69 00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:17,720 but the hermit saw dragons 70 00:05:17,720 --> 00:05:20,200 and he roared out with laughter. 71 00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:24,720 And everybody said, "Why are you laughing?" and he said, 72 00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:28,280 "I never expected that the Mandate of Heaven 73 00:05:28,280 --> 00:05:31,320 "would come back to earth so quickly." 74 00:06:40,960 --> 00:06:43,400 Ah, great. 75 00:06:43,400 --> 00:06:45,320 Ah, fantastic. 76 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:58,760 There's the surviving dragon, 77 00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:01,000 the last dragon of Twin Dragon Alley. 78 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:07,280 Any day now, Twin Dragon Alley will be redeveloped 79 00:07:07,280 --> 00:07:10,000 and soon only the memory will remain. 80 00:07:13,240 --> 00:07:18,320 But that's Kaifeng for you, China's city of memory. 81 00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:25,240 In 960, the older brother, Taizu, announced the new dynasty, the Song. 82 00:07:25,240 --> 00:07:29,280 And he made the capital here a vast new metropolis of wood 83 00:07:29,280 --> 00:07:33,000 and brick, thrown up in a feverish construction boom. 84 00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:37,280 This is Song building manual, 85 00:07:37,280 --> 00:07:39,720 commissioned in the early 12th century. 86 00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:46,760 If you are of a certain social status 87 00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:48,280 and if you can afford it 88 00:07:48,280 --> 00:07:53,800 you can build your house according to these...styles. 89 00:07:56,400 --> 00:08:00,280 So this tells you how to build a city, almost, doesn't it? 90 00:08:00,280 --> 00:08:03,560 Well, for a city of over a million people you would need 91 00:08:03,560 --> 00:08:05,600 lots of buildings. 92 00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:08,200 Biggest city in the world, perhaps, at that point? 93 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:10,400 Yes, definitely, at that time. 94 00:08:10,400 --> 00:08:12,400 'And to go with the new buildings 95 00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:14,840 'was a whole new conception of city life.' 96 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:19,120 Kaifeng was a much more open city, 97 00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:22,720 the lifestyle much more vibrant than the Tang Chang'an. 98 00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:27,000 All sorts of shops, all sorts of restaurants, even fast food, 99 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:28,720 there's mention of fast food. 100 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:37,480 And there was no curfew. That was, er, very important. 101 00:08:38,520 --> 00:08:41,760 Before this, residents in the city, these urban dwellers, 102 00:08:41,760 --> 00:08:45,320 were supposed to stay in their own wards after the bell. 103 00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:51,040 But in Kaifeng they were allowed to just flock to the markets 104 00:08:51,040 --> 00:08:52,760 and...enjoy their time. 105 00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:56,600 So all the pleasures of city life really start to unfold at this time. 106 00:08:56,600 --> 00:08:58,320 Yes. 107 00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:04,360 So a new capital for a new age. 108 00:09:06,480 --> 00:09:10,720 The largest city anywhere on Earth until the 19th century. 109 00:09:10,720 --> 00:09:12,560 And just like today's China, 110 00:09:12,560 --> 00:09:15,680 the city became a magnet for people flooding in. 111 00:09:18,120 --> 00:09:20,880 In a few years, it went from one square mile to 16. 112 00:09:25,720 --> 00:09:29,360 Only a few ancient buildings survive today above ground. 113 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:36,040 One of them is the famous Iron Pagoda, 114 00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:39,720 so called because of the metallic sheen of its tiles. 115 00:09:41,880 --> 00:09:45,760 We're out in the northeast corner of the old city here. 116 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:50,840 The Iron Pagoda is on a bit of raised ground in this corner. 117 00:09:50,840 --> 00:09:53,280 The Emperor had built this artificial mountain 118 00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:54,880 called the Hill of Longevity. 119 00:09:54,880 --> 00:09:57,480 Wonderful, these Chinese names, aren't they? 120 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:02,240 Compared with Rome or Constantinople, 121 00:10:02,240 --> 00:10:06,400 very little survives from Kaifeng's golden age. 122 00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:09,440 And you can see why when you look below the ground. 123 00:10:12,280 --> 00:10:16,240 Down here is evidence of 20 devastating floods 124 00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:19,280 of the Yellow River since the Song Dynasty. 125 00:10:20,760 --> 00:10:24,280 This pit is a metaphor for the story of the city. 126 00:10:26,160 --> 00:10:29,040 I've called Kaifeng the city of memory, 127 00:10:29,040 --> 00:10:31,680 China's capital of memory. 128 00:10:31,680 --> 00:10:35,680 And in this pit underneath the West Gate you can see why! 129 00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:39,600 That is the Qing Dynasty city wall, 130 00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:43,840 the 18th and 19th-century Qing Dynasty city wall. 131 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:48,080 And this smaller brickwork here, the Ming Dynasty wall, 132 00:10:48,080 --> 00:10:51,400 Tudor period - part of it carries on down. 133 00:10:51,400 --> 00:10:54,920 And the Song Dynasty city wall... 134 00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:58,240 maybe 20 feet below the floor level here. 135 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:00,280 It's an amazing thought, isn't it? 136 00:11:00,280 --> 00:11:01,840 And the reason why? 137 00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:06,800 That huge deposit of Yellow River mud, 138 00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:09,080 which is only a few miles from the city. 139 00:11:09,080 --> 00:11:11,800 These floods have been incredibly destructive all the way 140 00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:14,560 through Chinese history, sweeping through the whole city, 141 00:11:14,560 --> 00:11:20,240 destroying almost everything, even in recent times - 1842, for example. 142 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:25,520 No wonder, then, that city has been memorialised, if you like, 143 00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:29,240 not in stone, not in great buildings, 144 00:11:29,240 --> 00:11:31,960 but in words and in paintings. 145 00:11:40,920 --> 00:11:45,520 "A million people thronged these streets," said a Song poet. 146 00:11:45,520 --> 00:11:48,880 "There were restaurants as far as the eye could see. 147 00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:51,520 "Everywhere there was music in the air. 148 00:11:54,760 --> 00:11:57,640 "What would we give to see that age again?" 149 00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:08,600 But we CAN still see Song Kaifeng... 150 00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:11,840 in China's most famous work of art. 151 00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:16,880 As historical sources go, 152 00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:21,680 this is one of the most fabulous that exists in the world. 153 00:12:22,680 --> 00:12:25,880 It's a scroll. It's nearly 20 feet long. 154 00:12:25,880 --> 00:12:28,560 I'd need to unroll it across the middle of the street 155 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:31,080 if we were going to do that. 156 00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:35,640 It's simply a depiction of the city as it was just before 1127 157 00:12:35,640 --> 00:12:39,440 by a court painter, and it's the life of the ordinary people. 158 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:42,960 There is nothing like this in the whole of history. 159 00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:50,040 It gives you the streets, the alleyways, the hutongs, the shops. 160 00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:56,040 The taverns and restaurants, and all of them real places. 161 00:12:57,080 --> 00:13:00,320 Mr Wang's house, 162 00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:03,280 the Spice Shop, 163 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:06,640 Shenyang's Licensed Tavern. 164 00:13:06,640 --> 00:13:10,280 Physician Zhou's Residence, 165 00:13:10,280 --> 00:13:13,120 the Sugar Cane Shop, 166 00:13:13,120 --> 00:13:15,280 Dr Yang's Clinic. 167 00:13:18,840 --> 00:13:26,840 An amazing image of the sheer vitality of Song Dynasty China. 168 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:32,400 Here, 400 years before the European Renaissance 169 00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:36,640 with its commitment to human values, was a city dedicated to 170 00:13:36,640 --> 00:13:40,520 the prosperity and wellbeing of its people. 171 00:13:40,520 --> 00:13:43,480 A city for the many, not just the few. 172 00:13:45,280 --> 00:13:48,240 Not kings or warriors or the Church, 173 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:51,320 but the lives of ordinary people. 174 00:13:55,720 --> 00:13:59,960 It's an image of themselves the Chinese have loved ever since. 175 00:13:59,960 --> 00:14:03,520 So much so that they couldn't resist bringing it back to life. 176 00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:08,840 A journey back into a golden age, 177 00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:11,560 as one citizen recalled. 178 00:14:11,560 --> 00:14:14,680 "They were such happy times. 179 00:14:14,680 --> 00:14:18,680 "So many people and an abundance of things in the shops. 180 00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:21,280 "The wonderful festivals. 181 00:14:21,280 --> 00:14:24,960 "So many sights for the eye to enjoy. 182 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,480 "Above all, I remember the humane and congenial character of 183 00:14:28,480 --> 00:14:31,880 "the citizens, always ready to help a stranger." 184 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:37,280 A good time to live, do you think? SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE 185 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:41,160 "The lamp-lit nights, the sounds of music from the myriad taverns 186 00:14:41,160 --> 00:14:43,720 "and wine bars. 187 00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:47,680 "But you see then, this was a time of peace." 188 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:05,920 There are many legacies of the Song in today's China. 189 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:09,640 And one that's become celebrated across the world 190 00:15:09,640 --> 00:15:11,600 is Chinese cuisine. 191 00:15:14,360 --> 00:15:17,680 The Song thought that people should be well-fed 192 00:15:17,680 --> 00:15:22,480 and eating became the great social ritual it is today. 193 00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:25,120 Chinese cooking, of course, is one of the great 194 00:15:25,120 --> 00:15:28,400 cuisines of the world and the oldest cuisine in the world. 195 00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:33,920 But the beginnings lie in poor people's food. 196 00:15:33,920 --> 00:15:37,000 'Here they fed both the posh and the working man.' 197 00:15:38,600 --> 00:15:41,760 People have had to get used to making the best 198 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:46,000 out of whatever food source they could lay their hands on 199 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:48,360 and to make it palatable. 200 00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:51,200 But by the time of the Song Dynasty, it's, well, 201 00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:55,160 the first great restaurant culture of the world. 202 00:15:55,160 --> 00:15:58,920 The Chinese people by then are the best-fed people 203 00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:02,720 in the world, probably the best-fed that had ever been in history. 204 00:16:04,560 --> 00:16:08,000 And there's wonderful accounts of the restaurant culture 205 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:12,040 of the time - 70 great restaurants here in Kaifeng, 206 00:16:12,040 --> 00:16:16,520 the waiters rushing from table to table, taking the orders, 207 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:18,760 and rushing back from the hatch, 208 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:23,720 with three dishes of food down one arm and 20 bowls down the other. 209 00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:27,600 And never making a mistake, says one contemporary. 210 00:16:27,600 --> 00:16:30,880 And that restaurant culture brings you etiquette, 211 00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:32,720 how to behave at table, 212 00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:35,480 how to be considerate to your fellow diners, 213 00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:39,760 not to rush, not to chew loudly, to be careful 214 00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:43,280 when you're all eating from the same bowl. 215 00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:47,520 And that in turn, of course, brings you a kind of foodie culture. 216 00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:50,800 They've got cookbooks back in the Song Dynasty. 217 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:55,920 One of them has been reprinted ever since, the last time in 2004. 218 00:16:59,880 --> 00:17:04,120 Pure recipes from the Mountain House Cookbook. 219 00:17:04,120 --> 00:17:06,840 Oranges stuffed with crab meat. 220 00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:13,080 Bean curd steamed with hibiscus flowers. 221 00:17:13,080 --> 00:17:16,400 And each one of these recipes has got delightful 222 00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:19,760 notes by the author telling you where he first picked it up. 223 00:17:20,840 --> 00:17:22,680 Take this one, 224 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:25,640 plum-blossom noodle-cake soup. 225 00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:30,600 "I picked up this recipe from an old scholar 226 00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:35,760 "in the Zimou Mountains on a beautiful snowy night, 227 00:17:35,760 --> 00:17:39,040 "and whenever I taste it 228 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:42,440 "the exquisite moment comes flooding back to me." 229 00:17:50,600 --> 00:17:52,840 Let's just move some space. 230 00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:56,080 'In a restaurant in old Kaifeng, we asked the chef to make 231 00:17:56,080 --> 00:18:00,280 'one of these 11th-century recipes - adapted for the vegetarian.' 232 00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:04,400 HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE 233 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:15,360 There's a type of mushroom, pear, and lotus seed. 234 00:18:15,360 --> 00:18:17,480 - Lotus seeds? - Seeds, yeah. 235 00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:22,120 So you mix mushrooms and fruit? That's very interesting. 236 00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:28,000 Cos they have this function of, like, er...deflammation. 237 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,480 Oh, wow. 238 00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,240 It's delicious. SHE TRANSLATES 239 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,720 - He says it's his pleasure. - Thank you. Great. 240 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:44,320 I'm going to finish this off, if that's all right. 241 00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:46,160 Is that all right? 242 00:18:47,560 --> 00:18:49,320 LAUGHTER 243 00:18:58,040 --> 00:19:01,480 The Mountain House Cookbook was one of thousands of books 244 00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:04,280 you could buy in Kaifeng. 245 00:19:04,280 --> 00:19:06,240 Publishing boomed. 246 00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:11,360 From vast imperial encyclopaedias to poetry, history and ritual. 247 00:19:11,360 --> 00:19:13,680 And self-help manuals 248 00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:17,720 for the literate man and woman in the street. 249 00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:21,400 The Chinese had invented woodblock printing back in the Tang, 250 00:19:21,400 --> 00:19:24,920 one of many great inventions with which they led the world. 251 00:19:26,360 --> 00:19:30,240 And now in the Song they devised moveable type too, 252 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:33,920 although that never took off in the same way. 253 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:40,520 The first mention of this is slightly after 1040 by a person 254 00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:47,240 called Bi Sheng, using clay to print with moveable typeset. 255 00:19:47,240 --> 00:19:51,720 So each one of these is a Chinese character 256 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:57,240 - and they would form part of a page in a frame. - Yeah. 257 00:19:57,240 --> 00:19:59,840 But it wasn't...taken up? 258 00:19:59,840 --> 00:20:00,960 No. 259 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:03,200 The Chinese made this invention, which has proved 260 00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:08,000 so useful to the rest of the world, but they didn't find it useful. 261 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:09,360 Why? 262 00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:14,240 It has to do with the Chinese characters, 263 00:20:14,240 --> 00:20:17,840 because there are so many of them and, erm... 264 00:20:17,840 --> 00:20:21,520 Say if you look at this page, almost every character is 265 00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:25,680 a different one, so economically it wasn't viable, it wasn't efficient, 266 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:29,600 especially compared to just using a single woodblock print. 267 00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:33,400 - Too cumbersome for such a vast range of characters? - Yes. 268 00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:35,000 'And you can see exactly why 269 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:39,960 'when East met West in the 20th century, with the typewriter.' 270 00:20:39,960 --> 00:20:44,880 Each individual metal type is a Chinese character. 271 00:20:46,400 --> 00:20:51,720 You'd have to choose the right one, by...navigating this. 272 00:20:51,720 --> 00:20:56,120 And how many characters have they got for this machine, then? 273 00:20:56,120 --> 00:20:57,960 Probably about 2,000. 274 00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:01,560 So how many do you need to negotiate, 275 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:04,080 say, a newspaper in modern China, then? 276 00:21:04,080 --> 00:21:08,520 About 3,000 or 4,000 for the average. 277 00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:11,880 So strangely enough, although this seems very cumbersome, 278 00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:13,400 to be carving woodblocks, 279 00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:15,720 it's actually much more efficient. 280 00:21:15,720 --> 00:21:19,680 'Especially if a book stays in print for centuries, as they do in China.' 281 00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,040 So tell us about the readership in the Song, then? 282 00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:26,920 Does reading percolate down into ordinary people? 283 00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:31,640 Well, of course there are the more elite classes who... 284 00:21:31,640 --> 00:21:36,280 who can read and who are expected to read. 285 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:39,280 But definitely literacy is spreading in the Song. 286 00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,520 Even if they weren't able to read themselves, 287 00:21:44,520 --> 00:21:50,080 they would be easily able to find someone who can do that for them. 288 00:21:56,320 --> 00:21:59,840 One of the great things about the Song Dynasty is the attention 289 00:21:59,840 --> 00:22:03,680 to...what we would call, I suppose, civic values. 290 00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:07,480 They even publish books on old age. 291 00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:10,360 This... You're not going to believe this, 292 00:22:10,360 --> 00:22:14,720 but this is a book about... Well, it's called 293 00:22:14,720 --> 00:22:21,280 How To Help Old People Live Better, Longer And More Fulfilling Lives 294 00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:24,560 and it was written in 1085 295 00:22:24,560 --> 00:22:29,880 and it's gone through editions in every dynasty of China ever since 296 00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:33,720 and this is the latest 2013 printing. 297 00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:35,920 How about that? 298 00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:38,120 "Now, to care for old people, 299 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:41,680 "you have to look at the nature of their whole life. 300 00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:45,040 "Everybody has things that they really like. 301 00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:47,000 "Things that make them glad. 302 00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:51,200 "Books and paintings, music. 303 00:22:51,200 --> 00:22:54,200 "There are millions of things that people like. 304 00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:57,720 "If a person frequently seeks out the things that they've loved 305 00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:01,280 "all their life and focuses on their essence 306 00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:05,480 "and has these things around them, it will give them endless joy 307 00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,240 "and pleasure and their days will be joyful." 308 00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:14,200 And today's citizens still follow the Song's self-help message. 309 00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,240 Yeah, yeah, yeah, so dancing is very good. 310 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:50,520 'So in its ideas about the good life 311 00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:53,360 'the Song went beyond any earlier civilisation - 312 00:23:53,360 --> 00:23:55,640 'even the ancient Greeks.' 313 00:23:58,360 --> 00:24:03,400 And in science, the list of their inventions is incredible. 314 00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:07,200 From gunpowder and blast furnaces 315 00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:09,840 to the magnetic compass 316 00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:12,200 and evolution theory. 317 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:19,760 The most famous scientist came from a village down in Fujian 318 00:24:19,760 --> 00:24:21,760 on the south coast. 319 00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:24,280 Su Song. There he is. 320 00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:26,760 One of the great polymaths of the Song Dynasty, 321 00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:29,720 and they don't come much more poly than him. 322 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:33,440 He was an engineer, astronomer, scholar and poet 323 00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:38,600 but he also wrote treatises on mineralogy and zoology and pharmacology. 324 00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,800 It's real left-brain/right-brain stuff, isn't it? 325 00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:45,560 But their education enabled them to be both artistic 326 00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:50,920 and scientific, endlessly creative and endlessly curious. 327 00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:52,840 He reminds you of some of the great 328 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,360 figures of the Renaissance in Europe. 329 00:24:55,360 --> 00:24:59,080 I suppose you could say that he's the Chinese Leonardo, 330 00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:04,360 but to put it more correctly, Leonardo is the Western Su Song. 331 00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:19,160 This is Su Song's pet project, an astronomical clock. 332 00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:26,480 His proud hometown has just rebuilt a working replica. 333 00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:31,000 45 feet high, its mechanism a water clock, 334 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:34,000 driven by an endless chain drive. 335 00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:54,480 Inside the clock, there had to be a clock captain 336 00:25:54,480 --> 00:26:00,240 standing like the captain on the bridge of a boat 24 hours a day 337 00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,200 and periodically topping the water level up in the tanks. 338 00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:04,720 CLUNK 339 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,640 WATER CASCADES There you go. 340 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:10,880 Wonderful imagining this in the middle of Kaifeng, 341 00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:14,560 ringing out the hours 24 hours a day for the citizens 342 00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:16,680 as they go about their business. 343 00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:17,840 BELL CHIMES 344 00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:21,240 It's like the Song Dynasty's Big Ben. 345 00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:24,440 Scientific exploration thrived in the Song, 346 00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:28,560 in part because there was no theological straitjacket 347 00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:33,800 holding back speculation on the nature of time and the universe. 348 00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:35,400 Look at this. 349 00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,840 You see the goddess of mercy. It's a real women's cult here. 350 00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,480 Isn't this fantastic? It's a people's temple, this. 351 00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,200 Taoism and Buddhism were the official cults of the Song Empire, 352 00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:53,120 but religion wasn't an area where the government 353 00:26:53,120 --> 00:26:55,360 intruded into people's lives. 354 00:26:58,360 --> 00:27:00,600 Though always watchful of foreigners, 355 00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,560 the Song, just like the Tang, had many Muslim 356 00:27:03,560 --> 00:27:06,440 and Christian communities, which still survive. 357 00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:14,760 And in Kaifeng so do the last of the Chinese Jews. 358 00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,760 MAN BLOWS SHOFAR 359 00:27:16,760 --> 00:27:19,480 This is Chinese Rosh Hashanah. 360 00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:25,720 Under the Song, the population of China doubled. 361 00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:33,520 100 million in the year 1000, it was 200 million by the late 1200s, 362 00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:37,200 more than a third of the world's people. 363 00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:39,400 And with a huge urban population, 364 00:27:39,400 --> 00:27:43,000 just like the British in the 19th century, the Chinese invented 365 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:48,120 many games and sports, including what they called "kick-ball". 366 00:27:48,120 --> 00:27:51,440 We British, of course, pride ourselves on having invented 367 00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,480 the world's greatest game 368 00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,280 and in the sense that the rules of modern football 369 00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:57,960 were established in Britain - 370 00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:01,120 in Sheffield, to be precise, in the 1860s - that's true, 371 00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:05,520 but as usual in this story, the Chinese got there first. 372 00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:09,840 Football was massive in the Song Dynasty, a thousand years ago. 373 00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:11,520 SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE 374 00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,160 So I suppose you could say, as the Chinese would, 375 00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,880 "Zuqiu hui jia le" - football's coming home. 376 00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:21,920 CROWD ROARS 377 00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:34,160 It wasn't a mass sport, of course. There was no such thing then. 378 00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:37,520 But football in the Song was a spectator sport 379 00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:40,560 with clubs, handbooks, rules, and fans. 380 00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:45,320 STIRRING MUSIC PLAYS 381 00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,920 The Emperor's not arrived yet! 382 00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:00,560 WHISTLE BLOWS 383 00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:09,240 COMMENTARY IN CHINESE LANGUAGE 384 00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,360 Oh, wow! 385 00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,560 Different ways of playing the game in the Song Dynasty. 386 00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:24,320 The favourite one, the goals were posts about ten metres high, 387 00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:27,600 coloured net hung between them 388 00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,480 with a hole through which you had to shoot the ball. 389 00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:37,600 And of course, being China, ethical conduct was vital. 390 00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,240 In Song football, it was play up and play the game. 391 00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,200 Abusing the referee was un-Confucian, 392 00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:48,480 and professional fouls unthinkable. 393 00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:50,920 WHISTLE BLOWS 394 00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:52,680 Well, almost! 395 00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:17,960 And football wasn't just for the elite. 396 00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:21,080 China was opening up socially, 397 00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,000 and that went for government too. 398 00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,960 There was definitely a lot of social mobility 399 00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,120 going on during the Song. 400 00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:35,040 The social classes were in flux in some sense. 401 00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:38,920 People from all sorts of backgrounds 402 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,600 could engage more closely, 403 00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,880 who were more sensitive towards the social situation. 404 00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,200 They became involved in government too. 405 00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:52,880 New schools for learning opened up 406 00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:56,080 and...academies were established 407 00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:00,160 as well, that sought to teach the classics 408 00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,080 and also to...foster good character. 409 00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:08,080 It was the great age of Confucian social values 410 00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:12,280 and how they set about creating that ethos is startlingly modern. 411 00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:18,640 As you can see, it's freshers' week here in Henan University in Kaifeng. 412 00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:21,480 The story of universities goes back a long way in China, 413 00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:23,480 much further back than in the West. 414 00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:29,000 And, amazingly, here in Kaifeng in the 11th century 415 00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,000 there was a national university. 416 00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:38,160 In 1069, the Emperor expanded the student body from 1,000 417 00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,240 to more than 3,000. 418 00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:43,440 They had financial support and board and lodging. 419 00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:47,040 And the big idea was to draw in students from the provinces, 420 00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:51,120 talented youngsters perhaps even from middling or lower families, 421 00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,320 to come into the metropolis for the best education. 422 00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,240 And the goal, as the Emperor put it himself, 423 00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,320 for the morality of the culture. 424 00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,600 As educationalists say today, 425 00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:06,800 the ethos is the thing. 426 00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:15,440 For the examinations, the students studied literature, history 427 00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:17,160 and Confucian classics. 428 00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:19,920 The Emperor and his advisers were looking for 429 00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:24,480 tomorrow's administrators to govern a harmonious Confucian society. 430 00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:32,400 There was a new class of literati who previously, perhaps, 431 00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,520 didn't have the chance to sit through the examination system 432 00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:36,720 but now they had. 433 00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:43,760 Confucian teachings were really 434 00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:46,840 at the core of these civil examinations. 435 00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:50,840 And because they had such an important role to play 436 00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:52,920 in those examinations 437 00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:55,760 and that so many people took examinations, 438 00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:59,160 it meant that it was a way for Confucian ideas to really 439 00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:01,400 permeate into society. 440 00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:06,040 You could say that it was a meritocratic society 441 00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:10,320 where excellence in learning was really prized. 442 00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:16,120 Meritocratic, but not universal. 443 00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:21,280 Half of the population were excluded from this educational revolution. 444 00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:22,360 Women. 445 00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:26,480 But ironically, it's through the writings of a woman 446 00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,960 that we get one of the best insights into the world of the Song. 447 00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:33,960 These students are studying her work 448 00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:36,360 in today's university in Kaifeng. 449 00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:38,320 She's the poet Li Qingzhao. 450 00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:37,640 Li Qingzhao. 451 00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,560 She's one of China's greatest poets. 452 00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,920 Her father had encouraged her to write poetry from an early age 453 00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,280 and attend male poetic gatherings. 454 00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,840 And she was already famous and in print when she was 17, 455 00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,600 when she married a student from the university here in Kaifeng. 456 00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:58,880 And they spent a lot of time here in the great old Buddhist temple 457 00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:00,120 in the middle of town, 458 00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:03,200 wandering its courtyards, 459 00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:06,800 making rice-paper rubbings of its inscriptions. 460 00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:11,400 But recent feminist criticism here in China 461 00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,240 is giving us another view of her altogether. 462 00:35:14,240 --> 00:35:19,320 The strains within her marriage in a society dominated by men, 463 00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:22,800 the ambitions of a brilliant woman to find a voice 464 00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:28,840 that was not only interior and personal, but public and political. 465 00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:35,040 She was criticised by some at the time for saying things, 466 00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:36,320 for writing poetry. 467 00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,840 Women were not supposed to write poetry. This was a man thing. 468 00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:44,120 And poetry was one of the major ways of social interaction amongst men. 469 00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:47,640 You would go and drink a cup of wine 470 00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,480 and you would compose poetry with each other. 471 00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:52,240 You would say two lines of a poem 472 00:35:52,240 --> 00:35:54,840 and I would give you the next two lines. 473 00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,200 You would create new poetry in that way. 474 00:35:58,360 --> 00:35:59,680 Women could do this, 475 00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,480 but increasingly there were courtesans who did this. 476 00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:06,480 Respectable women didn't participate with men doing it. 477 00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:10,200 They still wrote, but we don't have very much surviving. 478 00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,800 - A lot of women wrote poetry, didn't they? - A lot of women did - write poetry, yes. 479 00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:17,080 - Being published is a different matter, perhaps. - That's right, yes. 480 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,680 Paradoxical period for women, isn't it, the Song? 481 00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:21,800 You know, so many social advances, 482 00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:26,200 women's voice appearing strongly, perhaps, for the first time. 483 00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,480 And yet, foot binding starting to become widespread. 484 00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:34,080 It's very mixed, because women become crucial to this political 485 00:36:34,080 --> 00:36:38,040 notion of loyalty, they have their equal part to play in that. 486 00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,880 But at the same time they are also being... 487 00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:44,600 Their rights that they have previously had, 488 00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:48,000 their economic rights, are being taken away from them. 489 00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,760 So women could be highly educated, but to play their part 490 00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:56,960 in male-led Confucian society, women were to cultivate loyalty 491 00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:02,000 to father, husband and state to ensure national cohesion. 492 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:06,600 So wrote the leading conservative, the historian Sima Guang. 493 00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:12,560 But in the late 11th century, right up to the top, 494 00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,200 the old way of doing things was challenged. 495 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,880 The leading light in the reformers was a man called Wang Anshi, 496 00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:25,240 a Southerner, who'd spent 20 years in local government. 497 00:37:25,240 --> 00:37:26,520 Ni hao. 498 00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,160 Wang pushed reforms across the board. 499 00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:33,840 Fairer taxes, government loans for the poor, 500 00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,400 new degrees in law and science. 501 00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:40,240 Breaking down class barriers in the name of economic efficiency. 502 00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:44,920 With growing threats on its frontiers, 503 00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,480 the state had an enormous defence budget, 504 00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,720 and Wang thought a more open society would make the economy work better. 505 00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,040 The Confucian classics, the old way of doing things, 506 00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:58,440 were put in their place. 507 00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:00,400 They had to have practical application. 508 00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:04,360 And of course the old-fashioned Confucian bureaucrats were horrified. 509 00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:06,760 And they took their case to the Emperor, 510 00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:09,400 here in the palace in Kaifeng. 511 00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:13,040 The Emperor favoured the reformers, 512 00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:18,080 but the conservatives in his council saw root-and-branch reform 513 00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:21,880 as potentially destabilising in uncertain times. 514 00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:31,000 In the winter of 1070, the great conservative opponent 515 00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:35,360 of the reforms, Sima Guang, petitioned the Emperor. 516 00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:37,680 He said, "We don't need these new laws. 517 00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:42,320 "What we need are good men trained in the old ways." 518 00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:48,000 "Look at the last 1,500 years of Chinese history," said Sima Guang. 519 00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:52,160 "You'll see the periods of peace add up to only 300 years, if that. 520 00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:55,280 "This shows how hard it is to create order 521 00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,040 "and how hard you must work to keep it once you've got it." 522 00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:03,320 And he ended with this - 523 00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:09,320 "I fear, at the moment, that our house may not be able 524 00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,040 "to shelter our nation from the rains 525 00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,440 "and the storms that are to come." 526 00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:25,480 It's one of the great what-ifs of history. 527 00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:27,320 At this point, towards 1100, 528 00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,040 China could have become the first modern society, 529 00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:34,400 with the most egalitarian system of government anywhere 530 00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:35,960 before modern times. 531 00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,000 Why that didn't happen 532 00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,760 was due to events beyond their control 533 00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:43,240 which would eventually overwhelm them. 534 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:51,520 The last 50 years of Song China saw climate change and famine 535 00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:55,280 and the incessant drumbeat of foreign armies on the frontiers. 536 00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,360 The Mandate of Heaven was not yet lost, 537 00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:07,160 but the harmony had gone. 538 00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:34,200 A contemporary wrote, 539 00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,760 "The problem was the wasting of national resources. 540 00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,920 "Public opinion wanted defence spending, 541 00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,280 "not grand building projects." 542 00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:56,800 The achievements of the Song Dynasty for 100 years were 543 00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:01,880 amazing across every field of human endeavour. 544 00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,520 TRADITIONAL CHINESE MUSIC IS PLAYED 545 00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:09,680 In 1101, the last great emperor of the united 546 00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:12,920 Northern and Southern Song came to the throne, Huizong. 547 00:41:20,720 --> 00:41:24,280 He was a Renaissance prince, surrounded himself 548 00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,800 with poets and thinkers. 549 00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:28,680 He was an accomplished painter. 550 00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:32,280 In his wonderful gardens, he listened to symphonies 551 00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:34,520 by Buddhist musicians. 552 00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,680 But as he plunged deeper into 553 00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:41,000 his introverted speculations 554 00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:44,440 about sacred kingship, he lost touch with reality. 555 00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,280 When much harder choices were needed, 556 00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:53,440 choices about military expenditure and defence budgets... 557 00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,040 ..and deployment of armies, 558 00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:02,480 as the barbarian forces gathered on the frontier. 559 00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:08,520 And when the crisis came, as he himself admitted, 560 00:42:08,520 --> 00:42:14,080 "I myself was mediocre, and in the end I failed the nation." 561 00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:26,200 The Song shared the East Asian landmass with many other states, 562 00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:31,600 and in the 1120s Jurchen invaders swept down from the north. 563 00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:40,120 In 1127, the Siege of Kaifeng began. 564 00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:55,960 It's one of the greatest, 565 00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:58,760 most poignant tragedies in Chinese history. 566 00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:00,440 Just imagine the scene. 567 00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,840 Thick snow swirling down from the sky. 568 00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:07,360 On the horizon, the gate towers of the outer city are on fire 569 00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:09,560 and many of the houses are burning. 570 00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:14,280 And here inside the walls of the inner city are hundreds of thousands 571 00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:20,000 of terrified citizens of Kaifeng, still resisting, hopelessly. 572 00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:22,640 The food's run out, the markets are empty. 573 00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:26,520 There are rumours, even, that people are eating human flesh. 574 00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,680 And the government now try to buy off the invaders, 575 00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,800 but they've no cards left to play. 576 00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:34,240 When they give gold, the invaders want more. 577 00:43:34,240 --> 00:43:37,680 They want millions of ounces of gold and silver. 578 00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:40,760 They want precious silks and fine wines. 579 00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:44,960 They want antiques, temple bells and ritual vessels. 580 00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:49,720 They want the musical instruments played by the imperial orchestra. 581 00:43:49,720 --> 00:43:53,800 And they want people, they want craftsmen, 582 00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,480 but especially they want women. 583 00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:01,120 They want the ladies-in-waiting from the imperial palace, 584 00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:04,720 they want the 1,500 female musicians who used to 585 00:44:04,720 --> 00:44:07,720 play before the Emperor, they want the wives and daughters 586 00:44:07,720 --> 00:44:11,240 of the royal family and the courtiers and the leading citizens, 587 00:44:11,240 --> 00:44:14,200 all to be delivered to their great camps 588 00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,720 to the north and south of the city. 589 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:20,680 And of course many of those women committed suicide rather than go. 590 00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:26,600 And so the city which symbolises the very best that civilisation 591 00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,520 had yet achieved on Earth was brought to nothing. 592 00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:39,800 In a bitter poem on the government's incompetence, Li Qingzhao 593 00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:43,240 reflected on the catastrophe. 594 00:44:43,240 --> 00:44:44,840 WOMAN READS IN CHINESE LANGUAGE 595 00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:47,920 "An age of glory passed like a lightning flash. 596 00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:52,240 "The troops of the Northern Barbarians 597 00:44:52,240 --> 00:44:54,840 "appeared as if they had dropped from heaven. 598 00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,240 "Tatar horses paraded in front of your banqueting hall 599 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:05,040 "and trampled pearls and emeralds into the fragrant dust. 600 00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:15,640 "What a waste of time it was 601 00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:20,600 "for great artists to carve your name into polished cliffs. 602 00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,360 "The Mandate of Heaven passed from you but you didn't see. 603 00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:29,360 "Times change and power passes. 604 00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:32,720 "It is the pity of the world." 605 00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:45,640 HE SPEAKS IN CHINESE LANGUAGE 606 00:45:48,240 --> 00:45:51,960 The Emperor, Huizong, and thousands of his courtiers were seized 607 00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:55,600 and taken north, where they died in captivity. 608 00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,680 But his brother fled beyond the reach of the invaders 609 00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:03,040 across the Yangtze river and vast numbers of refugees followed. 610 00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:10,600 You get a great sense of a Chinese medieval village from here, don't you? 611 00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:12,960 The big difference would be that today 612 00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:15,840 the houses are made out of brick and concrete. 613 00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:19,440 Then, they would have been wooden-framed, wooden-fronted houses 614 00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:21,520 like those old ones over there. 615 00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,760 And the people here were not scholars and bureaucrats - 616 00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:29,600 they were boatmen and dockers and warehousemen. 617 00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:40,960 And among the millions who fled south was the poet Li Qingzhao. 618 00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:49,120 "Those who lived in the west of the Yangtze river basin fled east. 619 00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,640 "Those in the north fled south. 620 00:46:54,440 --> 00:46:58,160 "Those in the hills fled to the cities. 621 00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:00,520 "Those in cities fled to the hills." 622 00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:06,680 Hello. 623 00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:11,320 "And in the end there was no-one who was not uprooted. 624 00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:19,800 "And I myself, Li Qingzhao, fled upstream, 625 00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,200 "crossed the river near the rapids and got to Jinhua. 626 00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:28,160 "There I found a place to live in the house of the Qin family. 627 00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:33,000 "There, after all the terror and all the hardship, 628 00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:34,880 "I found some peace of mind." 629 00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:37,920 MUSIC AND SINGING 630 00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:50,680 And so the patient and long-suffering Chinese people 631 00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:54,080 set out once more, as they have so often, 632 00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:58,520 to rebuild, refusing to give up on the Song dream. 633 00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,120 And it was here in the South in the 12th century that Chinese 634 00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:07,440 civilisation was reborn, in what we call the Southern Song. 635 00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:13,480 Up to this point, the South has been politically, 636 00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:15,200 and to some degree economically, 637 00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,200 somewhat more peripheral to the North, 638 00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:19,960 but now it's the moment when that completely changes. 639 00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:28,880 More and more people are settling in the South, more and more 640 00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:33,440 commerce and so on is developing in the South, and the economy booms. 641 00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:37,280 China is, in a sense, moving. 642 00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,240 It's moving from this very northern orientation, 643 00:48:40,240 --> 00:48:44,640 a northern east-west orientation, to a much more compact 644 00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:48,800 southeastern orientation that tends to be how we think of China now. 645 00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,480 The site they chose for the new capital 646 00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,640 was a then-unimportant place called Hangzhou, 647 00:48:57,640 --> 00:48:59,400 standing on the West Lake, 648 00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,280 one of China's loveliest spots. 649 00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:06,320 The Chinese have a proverb - 650 00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,480 in heaven there is paradise, 651 00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:12,760 but here on Earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou. 652 00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:15,200 In fact, the story goes Hangzhou was chosen 653 00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,400 because of the beauty of its landscape. 654 00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:23,200 And here they set out to recreate the lost city of dreams. 655 00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:26,080 There's a wonderful Chinese description from that time, 656 00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:29,400 which gives you a sense of the landscape that has enchanted 657 00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:33,240 Chinese poets and painters for more than a thousand years. 658 00:49:33,240 --> 00:49:37,480 Like a camera panning along the horizon from the blue grey hills, 659 00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:40,040 across the tranquil surface of the lake, 660 00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,840 and there where the landscape flattens, 661 00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:44,880 glittering like fish scales, 662 00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,200 the brightly glazed tiles of a myriad rooftops. 663 00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:55,640 Here, there was every single conceivable amenity of civilisation. 664 00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:07,440 So in Hangzhou, Song civilisation was restored - 665 00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:10,800 from the people's culture to practical government. 666 00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:12,440 There were fire stations 667 00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:16,760 and hospitals, old people's homes - and even dance pavilions. 668 00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:23,880 When the Italian Marco Polo came here in the 13th century, 669 00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,320 he called it the best city on earth. 670 00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,200 There were shops selling beauty products, make-up and face cream, 671 00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:33,880 eyeliner, false hair. 672 00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:39,200 And if shopping in Hangzhou hadn't worn you out, 673 00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:44,520 you could repair to teashops or wine bars or storytelling houses 674 00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:46,720 or huge public theatres. 675 00:50:46,720 --> 00:50:48,200 And if that wasn't enough, 676 00:50:48,200 --> 00:50:51,280 at the end of the evening you could go to fabulously appointed, 677 00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:56,320 exclusive hostess bars where the most famous courtesans of the time 678 00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:00,480 would serenade you with beautiful music - there was even a gay club! 679 00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:11,920 But to really understand the remaking of the Song world, 680 00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:15,360 you have to leave the glitter of Hangzhou behind. 681 00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:16,720 That's lovely. 682 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,320 Out in the countryside, south of the river, 683 00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:27,840 the Southern Song planted hundreds of new towns and villages 684 00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,120 to supply the capital with food and coal and timber. 685 00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:38,680 And here, at the grassroots, 686 00:51:38,680 --> 00:51:42,360 they passed on the cultural ethos of the Song. 687 00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:47,520 Even now in the old county towns 688 00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:50,400 you can meet descendants of the governing class. 689 00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:51,440 Ni hao. 690 00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:54,400 Hello! 691 00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:56,000 Wow! Look at this. 692 00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,720 'This is Qishan town, an old Song trading place.' 693 00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:05,360 Here in Mr Xie's crumbling family house, the signboard proudly 694 00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:09,760 salutes his ancestors who passed the Song civil-service exams. 695 00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:14,800 Hello, hello, hello, hello! Hello, hello, hello, hello! 696 00:52:16,080 --> 00:52:20,520 Let me just ask you about the sign above - what does that say? 697 00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:54,160 And despite all the upheavals of the 20th century, 698 00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:56,920 the old ideals are still passed on. 699 00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:02,880 Upstairs in the altar room, 700 00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:07,280 wooden plaques name the ancestors stretching back a thousand years. 701 00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:09,760 How many ancestors are commemorated here? 702 00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:17,640 Wow! So it's one of the biggest family lineages in China? 703 00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:32,960 So touching. 704 00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:37,280 'Across the generations, the thread connecting the living with 705 00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:43,080 'the dead, the Song ethos of virtue, duty and Confucian morality.' 706 00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:50,400 In the 1100s, here in the South, great thinkers like Zhu Xi 707 00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:53,800 shaped the Confucian ethos of China until today. 708 00:53:55,720 --> 00:54:01,040 Zhu Xi wrote China's most influential book after Confucius, 709 00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:03,040 a handbook to family rituals. 710 00:54:04,160 --> 00:54:06,760 It was said you could find one in every home 711 00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:08,400 in China in the 19th century. 712 00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:14,840 It's about the mutual dependence of family and ancestors. 713 00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,120 As Zhu Xi said, part of the state's effort 714 00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,960 to guide and transform the people. 715 00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:28,120 But the old cycles of Chinese history now returned to haunt them. 716 00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:37,720 In the 13th century, the world was turned upside down by the Mongols. 717 00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:41,400 Led by Genghis Khan, 718 00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,760 their armies swept west as far as the walls of Vienna. 719 00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:49,400 They overran Northern China, 720 00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,720 creating the most extensive empire in history. 721 00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:58,840 And then they gradually spread their power into the lands 722 00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:01,480 of the Southern Song by land and sea... 723 00:55:03,840 --> 00:55:06,240 ..until the last terrible battle. 724 00:55:10,520 --> 00:55:13,160 It was March 19th 1279. 725 00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:18,000 Dark day in the story of China. 726 00:55:21,720 --> 00:55:24,280 We're here almost exactly on the anniversary 727 00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:28,360 and it was a day just like this, with rain and drizzle. 728 00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:32,840 By the evening, you couldn't see the far shore. 729 00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:36,320 The Song commanders had not defended the narrows here, 730 00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:40,440 so the Mongol fleet was able to sail through into the lagoon. 731 00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:43,800 And there the Song navy faced them. 732 00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:45,520 They had about 1,000 ships 733 00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:48,680 lashed together to form a floating fortress... 734 00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:54,520 ..their decks protected by wet mud to stop the effects 735 00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:58,440 of the fire projectiles from the Mongol catapults. 736 00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,280 When the battle began, an eyewitness says, 737 00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:05,440 "The air was full of fiery traces of the Mongol firebombs." 738 00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:12,640 But when the tide rose, the Mongols were able to encircle the Song fleet 739 00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:17,280 and in the end the battle was lost and the young Emperor was trapped. 740 00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:24,720 And then the Emperor's loyal minister, Lu Xiufu, 741 00:56:24,720 --> 00:56:28,520 made a famous speech to the little boy - 742 00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:31,560 "The affairs of our state have come to this, 743 00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,240 "but we must not disgrace the nation." 744 00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:37,400 And he took the boy in his arms 745 00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:40,160 and he jumped into the sea to commit suicide. 746 00:56:43,360 --> 00:56:46,960 The little boy's pet white parrot began to screech 747 00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:50,400 and flap its wings until it overbalanced the cage 748 00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:52,720 and fell into the water after its master. 749 00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:57,160 So ended the glory of the Song. 750 00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:27,720 So in the later 13th century China was defeated, 751 00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:30,960 under alien rule, shocked to the core. 752 00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:41,440 The Mandate of Heaven was suspended but it was not lost. 753 00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:48,720 For China's cycles of order and disorder will continue. 754 00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:53,320 Another great age will arise, as in China it always does. 755 00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:59,560 One of the great eras of high civilisation in world history. 756 00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:06,080 But they won't follow the brilliant experiments of the Song 757 00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:08,800 on the path to modernity. 758 00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:13,080 Instead, the experience of defeat will give birth 759 00:58:13,080 --> 00:58:15,440 to a new kind of despotism. 760 00:58:16,560 --> 00:58:20,240 The new dynasty will be the Bringers of Light... 761 00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:26,320 ..the Ming.