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Cover of The Beginning of Early Modern China: The Song Dynasty
The Beginning of Early Modern China: The Song Dynasty
Yang Zhao Retells Chinese History, Season 7
Completed · 65 episodes
Buy for ¥98.00 （Original price ¥128.00）
Audio in Chinese
1. Preface: What Really Changed in the Tang–Song Transition? 2. How Should We Understand the Transition from Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the Song? 3. Zhao Kuangyin Donned the Yellow Robe: Premeditated or Unavoidable? 4. After Power Was Released over a Cup of Wine, Did Literati Gain Higher Status? 5. Was the Song Military Really Weak under Its Preference for Civil over Military Affairs? 6. What Flaws Came from Sacrificing Soldiers to Preserve Civilian Government? 7. Why Were Usurpations Rare in the Song? 8. Can Literati Really Govern a Country? 9. The Background to the Rise of Literati Culture from the Song Onward 10. Why Did Qin, Go, Calligraphy, and Painting Become Literati Culture's Core? 11. Why Was the Tang the Summit of Chinese Music History? 12. Why Did the Qin Represent Song Literati Music? 13. How Did Early-Modern Literati Music Reach Ordinary People? 14. Can Go Reveal a “Solution” to Life? 15. Is Winning the Most Important Thing in Go? 16. Why Could Chinese Chess Not Replace Go? 17. Literati Games: Too Refined for Most, or Enjoyed by All? 18. Clerical, Regular, Running Script—Where Did These Calligraphic Categories Come From? 19. In Calligraphy, What Matters More: Standards or Style? 20. Why Is Calligraphy More Like Music Than Painting? 21. What Does “Literati Painting” Actually Paint? 22. Why Did Song Literati Painting Discount Technique? 23. Why Are the Best Landscapes So Often Linked to Disappointment? 24. In Studying Literati Painting, Are Ideas More Important Than Works? 25. How Did the Illiterate Huineng Become Zen's Sixth Patriarch? 26. Must One Read Buddhist Scriptures to Become a Buddha? 27. Berating Buddhas and Patriarchs: Arrogance or Disenchantment? 28. How Did Chan Buddhism Enter Literati Culture? 29. Is Neo-Confucianism Learning for Essays or Learning for Life? 30. After Enlightenment, Where Does One Go? 31. Pointing Directly to the Mind: How Can We Know Principle as the Way of Heaven? 32. From Five Classics to Four Books: How Did Song Confucian Thought Change? 33. Why Did the Song, Which Favored Civil over Military Affairs, Become History's “Loser”? 34. Did the Song's Highest Generals Stay off the Battlefield? 35. How Did Favoring Civil Officials Transform Imperial Power? 36. What Understanding Did Song Scholars and Emperors Share? 37. From Factions of Status to Factions of Opinion: How Did Song Partisanship Differ from Tang? 38. What New Meaning Did Song Scholars Give to “Faction”? 39. What Political Soil Nourished Factional Conflict in the Northern Song? 40. Why Did So Many Officials Attack Wang Anshi? 41. Did Song Emperors Actually Like to Do the Bare Minimum? 42. The Puyi Debate, War with Xia, Deposing Empresses—What Obsessed Northern Song Emperors? 43. Why Did Emperor Huizong Abdicate in Such Haste? 44. Why Did Yue Fei's Grand Plan against the Jin Hasten His End? 45. How Did Early-Modern China Gradually Enter a Monetary Economy? 46. How Did North–South Trade Shape Southern Song Cities and Life? 47. What New Phenomena Did Song Market Trade Produce? 48. What Would We See in a Song Marketplace? 49. How Many Different Roles Did the “Literatus” Have in the Song? 50. For Song Literati, Which Mattered More: Literary or Confucian Orthodoxy? 51. How Did Ouyang Xiu Connect the Eight Masters of Tang and Song? 52. Was Writing Essays Really a Distracting Indulgence? 53. Why “Tang Poetry and Song Lyrics,” Not “Tang Lyrics and Song Poetry”? 54. Revival or Innovation: What Made Song Poetry Distinctive? 55. How Did the “Obliqueness” of Song Poetry Move beyond Tang Poetry? 56. How Did the Jiangxi School Shape Song Poetry? 57. Why Did Song Literati Write Poetry and Lyrics in Radically Different Styles? 58. How Did Ci Lyrics Separate from Music and Carry Deeper Meaning? 59. How Did Southern Tang Lyrics Usher in the Golden Age of Song Ci? 60. Why Did Li Qingzhao Think Su Shi Could Not Really Write Ci? 61. Why Did Ci Lose Its Vitality after the Song? 62. How Did Yelü Abaoji Break the Old System and Rise to the Summit of Khitan Power? 63. How Did Han Ideas of Rule Shape Khitan and Jurchen Politics? 64. Did Wholesale Sinicization and “Cultural Revival” Hasten the Jin's Fall? 65. Why Does Western Xia Lack an Independent Historical Record? (Finale)