Forward to the Song Dynasty

Map of the Song, marked with the territory lost in 1279

It's time to end Unit 1 of my class. Historiography-wise, we are done learning about the various points on the traditional dynastic sequence of Warring-States, Han dynasty, and Period of Disunion: that is, we see the textbook example of the rise and fall of a unified Chinese dynasty.

I'm not including any readings from the Tang dynasty, so I will skip right over it with brief mention (sorry, class -- maybe on another iteration we'll do Li Bai). Tomorrow the students are expecting to talk about the autobiography of Li Qingzhao and a one or two of her poems, so I'll need to give them a brief historical background.

A map shows us that the important thing to know about the Song is that half of the kingdom was lost to the Northern Jin in 1179. I mention my favorite image of the Khitan, their funny pots:



Quickly, though, we have to move on to Li Qingzhao. We'll talk about her autobiography, certainly -- that's the central feature of this lecture. We'll also explore a bit of her lyric poetry as well, though:

One poem covered by Theresa Teng.