All language subtitles for The Story of China Silk Roads and China Ships BBC 720p EN

China, a global superpower,
eyes set on the future,

its arrival on the world stage
greeted like the appearance

of a new planet.

But it is not the first time.

In the seventh century,
when Europe was in its Dark Age,

Tang Dynasty China became
the greatest

power on earth and would be for

1,000 years until the rise
of the West.

What's happening now has
happened before.

I'm in Xi'an, the capital of
the Tang, which 1,300 years ago was

the greatest
and most cosmopolitan city on earth.

And what made it great was not only
its economic and cultural power,

its sense of its own identity,
but its openness to other cultures.

Standing over the square,
the statue of one of the heroes

of that time, one of the great
figures in the history

of civilisation,
the Buddhist monk Xuanzang,

who brought the wisdom of India
back here to China.

This is the tale of a time which
even now the Chinese

see as a golden age.

In the story of China
we have reached the Tang Dynasty.

It's often said that in history

China has been a closed
civilisation,

introverted,
cutting itself off from the world.

And there have been times when
it has looked that way,

but since prehistory
China has never been isolated

and has thrived on contact.

And the Tang Dynasty was a great
age of international connection.

That time, vast numbers of foreign
peoples poured into China with

exotic goods, foods and ideas,
and even new religions.

And the great pathway of exchange
was the Silk Road.

We call it the Silk Road today,
but it wasn't really one road

but a series of land routes
connecting China with

the Mediterranean and India.

And the Silk Road turned China,

for the first time,
into a global civilisation.

Along it, just as today,
were many cultures and peoples,

different religions,

different ways of seeing the world.

Thank you, thank you so much.

The magic of the Silk Road.

The magic of Central Asia.

There is Han Chinese,
there's Uyghurs everywhere,

there's a guy from Kyrgyzstan -
you can tell by his hat.

Just like it would have been
in ancient times, you would've

seen Arabs and Persians,
probably Indians along with

the Han Chinese on this very edge
of Tang Dynasty China.

Greek historian Polybius has a very
interesting remark about this.

He is writing in the 100s BC.

He says that in ancient times
the histories of Europe

and Asia were completely separate,

they ran their own way,
but from our age onwards

the history of Europe
began to interact and engage with

the history of Asia and the history
of Asia with that of Europe.

You could say it is
the beginning of universal history

and it is happening
in the Tang Dynasty.

But in history,
when two civilisations first

come into contact, it's not always
peaceful and not always enriching.

To really open up to another culture
needs patience and humility,

to be willing to shed your own
preconceptions.

And in the seventh century
the Chinese were confident enough

to do that, to be changed
by the experience of the other.

The story begins at
the Chinese end of

the Silk Road in the old city
of Luoyang.

Luoyang was the ancient capital
of the Zhou Dynasty of 500 years

and for those centuries its poets

and scholars had praised it
as a place of great culture.

"It was the real heart of China,"

they said, "in the middle of the
middle plain of the Middle Kingdom."

And this is not just
a story about empires and economies

but about what it is to be
civilised.

Ni hao. Hello.

'It is about a new
spirit in Chinese culture...'

Look at this.
Magic world, Aladdin's cave.

'..a spirit that will give birth
to the greatest age

'of Chinese poetry...'

Ni hao. Ni hao.

'..a time when poetry came
out of the court into the streets,

'a witness to the times,

'expressing the human
condition as never before...'

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Famous poem of the Tang Dynasty.

'..knowing the insecurity of human
life as the Chinese always have.'

This floating life is just
like the water under the ice,

flowing eastwards day and night
and no-one notices.

Isn't that great?

So it is a place rich in culture,
rich in trade and merchants

and interested in foreigners.

And if you want to see just how
interested, go a few miles

outside Luoyang where the most

famous Indian of all time
is commemorated.

The Buddha.

The foreigner who most fascinated
the Chinese through

the whole of their history.

The adoption of this
Indian religion would

Ieave its mark on the very DNA
of Chinese civilisation.

What better symbol is
there of the impact of Buddhism

on Tang Dynasty China,
indeed a symbol of the impact

of the exchange of ideas and
civilisations, than this great cliff

pockmarked with devotion,
and in the middle, that huge

image of the Buddha himself whose
message had been carried

along what the Chinese called the
Road Carrying the Jewel of Truth?

How that happened,

how China embraced Buddhism, is one
of the great stories in history.

An adventure that
generations of storytellers

have turned into China's
favourite fairytale.

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

The Emperor had a dream

and in the dream a strange man
appeared to him with his skin

the colour of gold, framed
by the sun and moon and stars.

And the court astrologers
and diviners interpreted the dream.

But this man had come from the West

and it must be
the Buddha himself.

The Emperor was fascinated
and organised an expedition.

18 courtiers and scholars with
all their attendants journeyed

out to the West to find out more.

They got as far as Afghanistan
and there in a Buddhist monastery

they met two Indian monks who agreed
to come back with them to China.

They came back here and were
established in this monastery,

the White Horse Pagoda after
the white horses that they rode,

and they translated the first
Buddhist scriptures ever to be

rendered into Chinese. And
they died here and were buried here.

This is the tomb of one of
them, Kasyapa Matanga.

It's not the first exchange between
India and China but from that

moment onwards the dialogue
of civilisations will be continuous.

Now the story moves
on in time to the year 600.

In the wider world
the Roman Empire has fallen,

Byzantium is flowering and in China
the Mandate of Heaven has

passed to a new dynasty, the Tang.

In a village outside Luoyang,
a boy was born who would become

one of the most famous
people in Chinese history

and his name was Xuanzang.

Xuanzang must have known
this place very well

from childhood
and known all the stories,

especially about the two strangers
who had come from India.

"I was inflamed by a passionate
curiosity,"

he says, "about the Buddha
and about the origins of the faith

"and I applied for a foreign travel
permit several times to no avail.

"Perhaps because I was a nobody.

"And in the end
I took matters into my own hands

"and I left in secret for India."

He was 26 years old

and his journey would change
the course of Chinese civilisation.

It is a story that has fascinated me
over the years, travelling in his

footsteps between China
and Central Asia,

across Afghanistan into India.

At that time Xuanzang said,
"The Tang were new on the throne,

"China's frontiers
didn't extend far.

"There was a ban on foreign travel.

"At first I had to move by night
to dodge the border guards."

The real-life adventures of Xuanzang
gave birth to some of China's

best-loved legends and characters.

EXPLOSION

The Tang monk
and his crazy companions...

..the lustful Piggy,
the dim-witted Sandy

and above all the faithful Monkey.

and above all the faithful Monkey.

All of them changed by their magical
encounters along the Silk Road.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

In later novels and films it
turned into the kind of fantasy

the Chinese have always loved -

both comic adventure
and spiritual allegory.

On the real journey,
Xuanzang tells of oceans of sand

and the exotic peoples whose lands
he passed through.

"My fellow Buddhists tried
to persuade me

"not to risk my life further,"
he said,

"but I must reach the West.

"If I don't there's
no point in coming back."

Through time the story
just grew and grew.

The travelling shadow puppet players
still play it out in the villages.

And the city's storytellers say that
to tell the tale in full

would take 110 days.

So today it's one of the great
myths of Chinese culture.

A strange and wonderful
afterlife for a real Tang monk.

Xuanzang is one of those rare people
who turn up in history.

Visionary, great scholar...

..and yet possessed of incredible
physical toughness

and bravery and stamina.

After three years
and nearly 5,000 miles, he says,

"We crossed the great snowy
mountains and came down into India."

He crossed the River Indus
and entered the plains of India

with their teaming kingdoms
and cities.

He travelled with
Buddhist pilgrims down

the Grand Trunk Road
to the River Ganges.

And finally he reached Bodh Gaya
and the sacred Bodhi Tree

where 1,000 years before
the Buddha had sat in meditation

and gained enlightenment.

"And when I saw it," Xuanzang says,
"I lay on the ground

"and shed many tears."

THEY CHANT

He stayed in India for ten years
studying the Buddhist teachings,

his noble truths about
the human condition.

Then he set off home to take
them back to the Chinese people,

to fire their imaginations
as his story has ever since.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Four-year-old Xiao Yunhao is hoping
to be one of the next

generation of Monkey storytellers.

The China he came back to
in 643 was the largest

and strongest country on earth.

Its capital Chang'an, today's Xi'an,
was one of the world's great

centres of civilisation.

And as for the Emperor himself,
Taizong was at

the height of his powers
and a stickler for protocol.

The emperor's first words to
Xuanzang were, "Welcome back...

"..but you never asked
permission to go."

"Well," said Xuanzang,

"I applied for a permit for foreign
travel on several occasions

"but it never worked.

"Perhaps because I was a nobody."

He wasn't a nobody now.
Crowds came just to look at him.

He was supposed to be very
good looking which stood him

in good stead.

He was a very good-looking man.

I think it is difficult to
underestimate how much

Xuanzang really aroused
people's interest in him.

So many people came
to welcome him,

so many people came
to have a squint at him.

In fact he had to shut his doors
and say, "No more visitors, please,"

so that he could get on
with some work.

"It was my life's task,"
Xuanzang said,

"to bring the Buddha's teachings

"to the people of China for
the benefit of generations to come."

The Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an was
built to house the manuscripts

he brought back.

Most were lost long ago in wars
and revolutions

but for a few precious fragments.

So these are in Pali. Yeah.
This is the language of South India

and Sri Lanka.

657 books

in 520 packages

on 20 pack horses.

It must make you feel very proud
to be monks here.

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

The Emperor now commissioned
Xuanzang

to translate the Buddhist
scriptures into Chinese.

In the history of civilisation
it's a project comparable to

the Arabic translations
out of Greek...

THEY CHANT

..or the Bible from Greek
into Latin.

With the permission of the Emperor
he got quite a team together.

He had 12 people in his team
of Buddhists

who knew about the literature

and he had eight people
also in the team

who were phrase connectors,
is what they're called.

People who tried to put
things into Chinese of the time.

It was all part of Taizong's
insatiable appetite for learning.

He was one of China's great rulers,

a model of the Confucian
virtuous man.

He was a philosopher prince,
poet and rationalist,

and he thought that ruling
was inseparable

from the patronage of culture.

And now Taizong wouldn't leave
Xuanzang alone.

Xuanzang was supposed to be doing
all this translation work

but he didn't have time.

He had to spend all his time
at court trying to fulfil

the emperor's need for conversation.

He was a man who was consumed
by curiosity.

The Emperor himself said the
scriptures of Buddhism,

"are as unfathomable as
the depths of the sea

"or the height of the sky.

"In comparison, the teachings
of Confucius and Laozi

"and The Nine Schools are just
a single island in a great ocean".

The Emperor was
so impressed by his bearing

and intelligence that he asked him
to hang up his Buddhist robe

and to become his prime minister.

"Help me run the country."

And Xuanzang refused him.

He said, "It would be like taking
a boat out of the water.

"Not only would it cease
to be useful

"but in time it would rot away."

Xuanzang Died in 664.

His ashes are buried in the little
monastery of Xingjiao Si

near Xi'an.

Spared in the cultural revolution
of the 1960s at the command

of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai
himself,

too precious to the collective
memory of the Chinese people.

Over the centuries Buddhism would
profoundly touch the Chinese soul,

as it still does.

And back then, perhaps this Indian
religion brought something

they felt their culture lacked.

A spiritual path based on

personal conscience
and compassion.

For me it is almost a homage
to a fellow traveller.

I travelled most of his route
through Xinjiang

and the northwest frontier
of Pakistan

and all the way across
India to Patna.

And to think,
he did most of that on foot.

Here is Xuanzang,
the great traveller.

I can't believe that he had sandals
on the Hindu Kush!

Huge framed backpack here
made out of bamboo.

Can you see the bamboo strips?

With all the scrolls of
the manuscripts stored there.

Of course, actually,

he had all that stuff in cases.

It is a symbolic picture.

And finally the lovely touch
here of a lantern to

illuminate his journey at night.

After he had returned from China,
Xuanzang kept in touch with his old

Indian friends by letter.

And those letters,
though unknown in the West,

are among the most moving documents
in the history of civilisation.

In fact, in my opinion, they tell
you what civilisation really is,

written by a member of one culture
who had lovingly and totally

immersed himself in another.

He writes the news.

"The great Emperor of the Tang,"
he says, "is joyfully supporting

"Buddhism and ruling with justice
and mercy like a compassionate

"Chakravartin," the old Sanskrit
Indian word for a great ruler.

But it is his letter to
the abbot of Bodh Gaya which is

the most touching.

Indeed all the more so

because they belonged to opposed
schools of Buddhism.

MAN READS LETTER

"A great while has elapsed
since we were parted,"

he writes, "which has only
increased my admiration for you.

"I am sending you
my very best wishes.

"Of the works that we brought
back from India I have already

"translated 30 and two more will be
finished by the end of the year.

"And there's one more thing.

"On my way back from India I lost
a horse-load of manuscripts

"fording the River Indus.

"I am sending you
a list of the books in the hope that

"perhaps you can get them
translated and sent to me.

"This is all for now.

"Best wishes, the monk Xuanzang."

YELLING

In the seventh century Xi'an was
the greatest city in the world...

..half a million people,
where the biggest European city

had only a few thousand.

It was a dynamic place of new
styles, new fashions and new music.

PEOPLE SING

The city, it was said, was laid out
like a vast chessboard.

About five miles square
and we are just here at this corner.

Tang Xi'an was
strictly regulated.

That was the way Chinese
cities had always been,

vast gated royal enclosures where
public access was controlled.

Xi'an had 108 wards,

all of them under curfew.

So this was Anxi Ward in

Tang Dynasty times,
in between a palace area

and the great government
area over there.

So it was quite posh,
quite well-to-do.

There was...

..mansions of court musicians,
a princess lived down the road.

Looks like you can still buy some of
their garden ornaments, doesn't it?

The city was low-rise.
Palaces, residential quarters,

gardens, almost every ward had
Buddhist and Taoist temples.

Ni hao. Ni hao.

You see all
the things for temples here.

Incense, that's because right
back to the Tang Dynasty there was

a huge temple in this area.

And it is still a Taoist temple
today,

the Temple of the Eight Immortals.

There you go.

The Temple of the Eight Immortals.

The theatre quarter
and red light districts were here,

the hostels for candidates
for the civil service exams,

and all tastes were catered for.

Fortune-tellers,
ancient Chinese craft.

Later, later!

There were special funeral streets.

One of them features in a famous
Tang novel.

I love all these pilgrimage
knick-knacks.

My family are really fed up with me
bringing them back to London.

It may seem hard to square all this
control with an outward-looking age

but the Tang was
a centralized state

where everyone was registered
in the censuses.

Social harmony came
from knowing and keeping your place.

Here is the Drum Tower.

Much later, of course, Ming Dynasty,
but there was a drum tower

in the middle of Tang Dynasty Xi'an,
beating the drum for the curfew.

A very strictly-regulated city.

You couldn't be found outside
your own ward at night, for example.

So the 600 beats of the drum,
you had to be back home.

DRUMBEATS

In the seventh century
the West Market

was the Central Asian quarter.

Here were the Silk Road merchants,
Uyghurs and Persians,

and they brought all their
exotic foods with them.

Cherries, barbaries, apricots,
peaches from Afghanistan.

Xie xie.

Oh, my God!

I'm coming back there.
Beautiful! Xie xie.

Fizzing with energy,
the capital city matched

the ambitions of the
Emperor Taizong on himself.

In this period China changes
from a feudal order

to a bureaucratic state
with civil service exams.

And the state becomes synonymous
with Han Chinese civilisation.

Which is why people today look
on Taizong's reign as a golden age.

I'm a great admirer of
Li Shimin, Tang Taizong.

He was like a lot of founding
emperors -

he was very ambitious, very
ruthless, excellent administrator

and probably a bit of
a control freak.

He did a lot to establish
the rule of China.

It was Taizong who decided
that the Silk Road should be

brought under the umbrella
of Chinese civilisation.

Only a few years after Xuanzang
made his journey west,

Chinese armies marched
in his footsteps.

The Tang emperors sent their armies
up the Silk Route

here into Central Asia and
they captured the great city of

Gaochang here in 642.

And you could say that the modern
idea of a greater China, including

all these territories, can be traced
back to that time and this place.

The goal was to protect China's
luxury trade with the West

but it was also political -

to make China the great
power of Asia.

China was now at its biggest
extent before the 18th century.

It had become a continental
civilisation

and will see itself
that way from then until now.

Driven by a thriving economy
and a rising population,

this is the time
of the colonization

and development of the south

as China's centre of wealth
and trade.

The big story of the Tang Dynasty
between the 600s

and the 900s is
the shift to the south.

At that time,
a Chinese official writes,

"Every stream in the Empire
was full of ships.

"Thousands, tens of thousands of
great ships moving constantly

"back and forth, always circulating,
and if they stop for a single

"moment 10,000 merchants would be
bankrupted."

It's the beginning of China
as a commercial society

and the beginning of great trading
cities, and none of them

was more important than the one
that grew up at the junction

of the Grand Canal going north-south
and the Yangtze River going from

the west to the east, the number one
city of the Tang Dynasty in trade,

Yangzhou.

If Xi'an was the centre of
the imperial administration,

Yangzhou was China's
commercial heart.

It is the beginning
of the industrial south.

You can still get a feel of the Tang
in the core of old Yangzhou.

And the key to the success of the
city and to the rise of the south

was one of China's great practical
achievements, the Grand Canal.

Built at the start of the 600s
the canal connected the north

and the south with the river
routes east and west.

And it is still crucial
to today's economy.

Originally built 1,500 years
ago, Shaobo Lock today

handles over 70 million tonnes
a year.

It's an amazing scene.

It goes on all through the day,
does it?

Yes, 24 hours a day.

24 hours a day! Yeah. Wow!

It took five million men to build
the first section in 605,

eventually running north to a small
place called Beijing.

And it was built 1,000 years before
the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

On the up is number three
and in the middle is number two

and behind is number one.

Mainly carrying heavy materials.

Erm...

Coal. Coal.

And building materials.
Building materials.

China is building everywhere!

Fantastic!

Just as today, such projects were
only possible with

a command economy.

And with it,
the Tang transformed China.

In the seventh century
the economy boomed.

The canal shipped 165,000 tonnes
of grain each year just to feed

the new garrisons in the south.

And standing at the intersection
of China's waterways,

Yangzhou became a new kind of city.

It's the first sign of
the beginning of the modern.

The city never slept.

It is probably the first
large city in history to employ

artificial lighting on
a grand scale.

Even the barge traffic on the
Grand Canal was able to keep moving

through the city
until well after midnight.

So Tang Dynasty Yangzhou was
always open for business.

And so too, of course,
was the entertainment industry,

the taverns and music bars

and the brothels described
with delicate euphemisms

in Tang Dynasty poetry as Yangzhou's
"ten miles of summer breeze."

In the 830s it was all
immortalized by the poet Du Mu

in a tag which has hung around
the city,

for all its ups and downs,
from that day to this -

"the Yangzhou dream."

And as the south grew rich
they looked for new

outlets for international trade,

not only by land but by sea,
all the way to the Persian Gulf.

So here in the south in
the Tang Dynasty we've got

the beginnings of what I suppose we
could call the maritime Silk Road.

Long-distance international trade
organized by merchants

here in cities like Yangzhou.

And they're selling
very top-end stuff -

silks and fine cloths
and exotic tableware.

They are selling mass-produced
ceramics designed with

the Western consumer in mind
and they are also selling

what will become the most popular
drink in the world -

tea.

Tea had begun in the south on
the subtropical hillsides of Yunnan.

Originally drunk for health,
by the Tang

its use spread everywhere
and the first books had been

published on its beneficial
effects.

It has never looked back.

They exported silk, too,

coveted since Roman times
by Westerners

who were prepared to pay
jaw-dropping prices

for garments fit
for an emperor.

Here is a dragon, it's a dragon.

So you might think China's role
today as a global mass producer

is a new phenomenon
in world history but it's not.

It has been estimated that Tang
China had 55% of the world's GDP

with its vast internal market,
from local village craftsmen

and women to the Imperial factories,

and from everyday ceramics to
gorgeous works of art.

Tang China was a giant
engine of growth.

So let's view the early medieval
world in a different way.

Tang China was the superpower.

They exported Confucian ideas,
Buddhist religion,

their written script
and their language,

adopted across East Asia and Japan.

The Japanese even imitated
Tang Xi'an in the architecture of

their capital, Nara.

China's influence on the East

was as profound as Rome
in the Latin West.

In the East, in the seventh century,

all roads led to Xi'an.

And if you want a symbol of the age,

just outside Xi'an stand
the statues of 108 ambassadors

from Central Asia to Japan,

and Vietnam to Persia.

The diplomatic pecking order
of the Tang foreign office.

This was the time when China
went out to the world

and the world came here to China.

HE CHANTS

And Islam also came to China
in the Tang.

Peacefully, which was not
always the case in history.

We believe during the
Prophet Muhammad's time,

peace be upon him,

encouraged our ancestors to find
technology developed in China.

Seek knowledge as far as China.

It had been the year Xuanzang
arrived in India

that the Prophet had died in Arabia,

telling his followers to seek
knowledge as far as China.

HE CHANTS

Today we speak Chinese Mandarin
and the local dialect

but in history we used to speak
Chinese,

Arabic, Farsi and Mongolian.

Four languages, some time.

And this time, Tang Dynasty China
was the centre of the world.

Xi'an was the centre of the world,
I suppose.

Superpower. The superpower.

To welcome an alien religion

would hardly have been possible
in the West or the Islamic world

before modern times.

It shows that while the Chinese
believed in the superiority

of their civilisation,

they also knew there were many
paths to enlightenment...

..that all knowledge was useful
in understanding the cosmos...

..and the position of
humanity in it.

And that idea is expressed in one of
the most astonishing monuments

in the whole of Chinese history.

It's a stone inscription recording
the coming of Christianity to China

as far back as the 630s.

This is one of China's
great national treasures,

one of the select list
of the A-list monuments

that can never leave the country,

and as an account of
the interaction of civilisations

it's really hard to beat.
Let's start at the top.

Those nine characters say

"a monument commemorating

"the propagation of the
luminous religion of the West."

That is Christianity.

In 635, it says,
a wise man from the West,

perhaps from Persia,
called Raban,

decided to bring the Christian
scriptures to China.

Observing the path of the winds,

through great perils he made
his way all the way to China,

presumably on the Silk Route,

and arrived here in Chang'an.
The Emperor, it says,

received him here in Chang'an
and the Christian scriptures

were translated in
the Imperial Library.

And then the Emperor considered them
in his private apartments

and was deeply convinced
by their truthfulness

and issued this proclamation in 638.

"The way for humanity, at different
times, different places,

"did not have the same name.

"And the great Sage, at different
times and different places,

"was not in the same human body.

"Over history, heaven ordained

"that true religion would be
established in different countries

"and different climates so that
all of humanity could be saved.

"And we've considered the Christian
scriptures and have decided that,

"in all their essentials,

"they are about the core values
of humanity

"and we have decreed that they be
propagated throughout the Empire."

But the story of China is one of
cycles of creation and destruction.

And in the next century the Empire
faced a perfect storm of crises.

It began out in the West.

Battles against the expanding
Muslim caliphate,

savage internal rebellions

reported by one of the great
Tang poets, Li Bai.

"Last year," says Li Bai,

"we were fighting out to
the north beyond the Great Wall

"and this year we're fighting
far out in the west

"on the Kashgar River.

"We've washed our blades
in the streams of Parthia

"and grazed our horses amid
the snows of Tian Shan."

There it is. There's Tian Shan.

What a place to imagine it,
here in Jiaohe,

Tang Dynasty-garrisoned town with
its watch tower and beacon platform.

"But," says Li Bai, "the beacon
fires are always burning.

"The marching and the fighting
never stops and nor does the dying.

"You should know that the sword
is a cursed thing

"that the wise man
uses only if he must."

Out in these vast expanses
the Tang Empire was overstretched.

And in the end
they abandoned the west.

China would only regain it
in the 18th century.

The crisis came under
the Emperor Xuanzong,

the apocalyptic eight-year
rebellion of General An Lushan

which saw the end of the Tang dream
of a greater China.

The oasis of Turfan was one of
the Tang garrison towns

out in the western deserts.

So when Li Bai writes his poem
about fighting in the west,

it's this area he's talking about.
Mm, yes, I think so, yes.

In about 755,
because of the rebellion

of An Lushan and Shi Siming,

the central government became much
weaker so the stationed troops

were returned to inland China
to fight against

the army of An Lushan
and Shi Siming.

An Lushan. So this was a very big
shock. Yeah, a big war lord. Yeah.

An Lushan, a bogeyman who
chilled hearts back in Xi'an.

Far to the northeast he gathered
armies to take revenge

after the Emperor
had killed his son.

At home, the Dynasty had lost
touch with the people.

The tombs of the eighth-century
royals near Xi'an

show their pastimes and pleasures,
polo and hunting

and courtly parties,
oblivious to the gathering storm.

These are wonderful images
outside the tomb chamber.

They're courtly ladies,
just attendants.

In their stylish fashions
they could be fin de siecle, Paris,

couldn't they?
Central Asian fashions.

These are the vogue
in the early 700s.

The faces are so animated, you can
almost imagine their conversations.

The gossip, the rumours.

Courts that were seething
with anxiety.

I'm afraid we Chinese never manage
to live more than 50 years

without some terrible
cataclysmic event.

The cycles of Chinese history.
That's right.

And it had been a particularly good
period up until the Emperor -

the brilliant Emperor -

began, allegedly, to love
his concubine, Yang Guifei,

the precious concubine, too much.

And he left quite a lot of the work
of governing the country

to various people, especially to
this concubine's family and so on,

which was absolutely disastrous.

The story goes that the Emperor
sent his men over the land to find

the most beautiful woman in China.

They failed, of course, but then,

when he was bathing here
in the hot springs,

he saw the 18-year-old daughter
of a high official...

..the warm water running down
her glistening, jade-like body,

as the poet Bai Juyi
tells the story.

The Emperor had dreamed of a beauty
who could topple an empire.

Meanwhile, a girl in
the Yang family came of age.

And when she smiled she could melt
the heart with a single glance.

And from that day the Emperor
missed every morning court.

But then one day the ground was
shaken by the war drums of a revolt.

An Lushan came in with his Tibetans,
went straight to Chang'an.

Soldiers carried the Emperor
and his favourites

out of the capital overnight,

it was so desperate an emergency.

But when they got into the hills -
because he was making for Sichuan,

which was hilly, where he thought
he would be safe -

his bodyguards,
a small group of people,

rebelled and said they were not
going any further

as long as the Emperor had this
favourite, and favourites with him.

And the favourites
had to be slaughtered.

Among them was the Lady Yang,

strung up on a tree on a silk cord.

The great rebellion of the An Lushan
period was extremely hard on China.

An enormous number of people
were killed or displaced.

And we know from the census that
were taken before that happened

and after it, 35 million people
were missing.

As government broke down,
eight years of horror unfolded.

It was a national catastrophe,
described by China's greatest poet,

Du Fu, in lines remembered
ever since by the Chinese people

in times of trouble.

WOMAN READS POEM

"Guo po." Just two words. It means
the state has been demolished

and it doesn't exist any more.
There's no state left.

But "shan he zai" -

the mountains and the river
still remain.

In all the 3,000 years
of Chinese poetry,

the world's oldest living
poetic tradition, it's Du Fu,

the poet of this terrible time,

who is their most loved because
he spoke in the people's voice.

He's still part of the school
syllabus today

so every Chinese child
knows how the Tang fell...

Hi, hello.

'..not from their history class
but from poetry.'

Nice to meet you. Ah, very good,
you speak English. Wonderful!

'And here at the secondary
school in Yanshi outside Luoyang,

'they've an extra reason
to know all about it.'

This is the tomb here?
Yes. Ah!

'Because Du Fu's grave
is in the school grounds.

'He wasn't famous when he died.
The inscription says...'

GIRL READS INSCRIPTION

"The tomb of Mr Du, government
deputy irrigation inspector."

Terrific, xie xie.
Wonderful, wonderful.

LAUGHTER

Fantastic! Fantastic.

As the Tang world collapsed,

one last brief poem by Du Fu
tells how he met again,

south of the river,

a famous musician
once high in the king's favour.

MICHAEL READS POEM

Who is the prince of the Qi, Qiwang?
Does anybody know?

Is he a big, important person?

I know Qiwang is the brother
of the Emperor Tang Xuanzong.

He's the brother of
the Emperor Xuanzong. Yes.

Great. So a very important man,
then.

Du Fu is recalling...

the palace of Qiwang's.

Now, this phrase here...

HE READS THE POEM

Which you read beautifully, if I may
say so, it was very, very good.

And then this line here is so
fantastic - don't laugh at me.

HE READS THE POEM

"The falling flowers time,
season, is here again

"and in this time I meet you again."

The falling flowers
in Chinese poetry,

can you explain to me
what this means?

Anybody?

I think it means, you know,
flowers are falling down

and the period of
the season is gone.

And it also means that
Tang Dynasty is gone.

And at the same time
he meets his old friend

and the old memories -
the beautiful memories -

come back and he feels very sad.

So falling flowers is not just
blossom falling,

it's a feeling of melancholy
in the heart.

And the Tang Dynasty is falling,

there is a mood
of Autumn and sadness

and he meets the man who was
once this great figure.

Such a simple poem, isn't it?

Just four lines and yet
it's full of fantastic ideas.

Thank you for being patient!

Xie xie...

..to you!

So the state was broken

but the landscape survived

and so did the people.

It's a very high-class
social media piece here.

The ninth century was a time
of famines and more rebellions.

In the end, the Tang lose their
nerve and start to look inwards.

In the 840s they even launch
a persecution of Buddhism,

now a symbol of un-Chinese ideas.

And so the Mandate of Heaven was
lost but as the Buddha had said,

and the Chinese have always
known too well,

all things must pass.

On the 1st of June, 907,
the last Tang Emperor abdicated,

bringing to end an age
of amazing creativity.

An age by which the Chinese
still define themselves today.

A time in which Xi'an here rivalled
and then surpassed Baghdad

and Constantinople
as a city of the world.

For a time,
China will plunge into anarchy,

but a new age of greatness
will soon arise,

as in China it always has.