Chapter 8 Chapter Three The Blending of Chinese and Western Cultures in the Tang and Song Dynasties

From Tang to Song and Yuan Dynasties, economic and cultural exchanges between China and the western outside world entered a new period of rapid growth.This is due to changes in bilateral political and economic conditions. In terms of China, after the Han Empire, the Tang Dynasty once again revitalized China and became a powerful, unified and prosperous Eastern feudal empire.China's feudal society has entered a heyday of high development.Due to the upsurge of the feudal economy and the strength of the country, China's conditions for foreign economic and cultural exchanges are extremely superior in terms of demand and strength.The powerful national power of the Great Tang Empire and its grandeur to embrace the whole world have undoubtedly greatly reduced its resistance to cultural exchanges with distant places and exotic lands.The Song Dynasty not only maintained the high momentum of foreign cultural exchanges initiated by the Tang Dynasty, but also especially due to the situation of partial security in the Southern Song Dynasty, the land was shrinking sharply and the burden of national wars was extremely heavy, so funds were scarce and more dependent on the economic benefits of foreign trade by sea.The short-term unification of China caused by the Mongolian Expedition and the Yuan Dynasty brought unprecedented convenience to the transportation between China and the West.Therefore, from the Tang to the Song and Yuan Dynasties, cultural exchanges between China and the West became more extensive and in-depth.

In the West, after the middle of the 7th century AD, under the banner of Islamic jihad, the Arabs quickly occupied Egypt, the Maghreb, and other parts of the Eurasian continent with a sweeping force, and established a powerful empire that spanned three continents. Arab Empire.The rise of the Arab Empire and the rapid spread of Islam to the vast areas of Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia not only promoted the development of sea and land transportation between east and west, but also promoted the social development and development of the eastern and southern regions of the Western Mediterranean. Prosperity. In the second half of the 10th century, the Fatimid dynasty conquered Egypt and moved their capital to Cairo. In 1260, after the Egyptian Mamluk Dynasty Sultan Babels defeated the Mongolian Western Expeditionary Army, Egypt became the political, economic and cultural center of the entire Muslim world.According to Ibn Battuta, a great Moroccan traveler in the Middle Ages, Alexandria's "ports are huge and rare in the world, only the ports of Julan and Guri in India, the port of Sudak under the jurisdiction of the Turks and the thorns in China. Tong (that is, Quanzhou) Hong Kong can be compared with ".Cairo, on the other hand, “is the local capital. The capital of the pharaoh has a vast area, rich products, and connected houses, and it can’t accommodate it. Cairo has always been lucky, so it can rule all peoples and manage Arabs and foreigners.”The highly developed Islamic feudal civilization created by the Arabs in West Asia and North Africa enabled them to achieve high-level cultural exchanges when interacting with Chinese civilization.Europe, at this time, was mainly the beneficiary of the exchanges between the Chinese civilization and the Arab civilization.Especially after the 12th century, with the active business of the Italian peninsula, Venice and Genoa developed into the largest commercial ports in Europe. They mainly carried out oriental trade, focusing on the distant and fabulously rich China.

It was against the above-mentioned background that Sino-Western transportation and cultural exchanges entered a period of great upsurge, both in breadth and depth, far surpassing that of the Han Dynasty.