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The Tang dynasty (, ; c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilisation, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivalled that of the Han dynasty.
The Li family founded the dynasty after taking advantage of a period of Sui decline and precipitating their final collapse, in turn inaugurating a period of progress and stability in the first half of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty was formally interrupted during 690–705 when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Wu Zhou dynasty and becoming the only legitimate Chinese empress regnant. The An Lushan rebellion (755–763) led to devastation and the decline of central authority during the latter half of the dynasty. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang maintained a civil-service system by recruiting through standardised examinations and recommendations to office. The rise of regional military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century undermined this civil order. The dynasty and central government went into decline by the latter half of the 9th century; agrarian rebellions resulted in mass population loss and displacement, widespread poverty, and further government dysfunction that ultimately ended the dynasty in 907.
The Tang capital at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an) was the world's most populous city for much of the dynasty's existence. Two censuses of the 7th and 8th centuries estimated the empire's population at about 50 million people, which grew to an estimated 80 million by the dynasty's end. From its numerous subjects, the dynasty raised professional and conscripted armies of hundreds of thousands of troops to contend with nomadic powers for control of Inner Asia and the lucrative trade-routes along the Silk Road. Far-flung kingdoms and states paid tribute to the Tang court, while the Tang also indirectly controlled several regions through a protectorate system. In addition to its political hegemony, the Tang exerted a powerful cultural influence over neighbouring nations such as Classical Japan and Korea.
Chinese culture flourished and further matured during the Tang era. It is traditionally considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry. Two of China's most famous poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, belonged to this age, contributing with poets such as Wang Wei to the monumental Three Hundred Tang Poems. Many famous painters such as Han Gan, Zhang Xuan, and Zhou Fang were active, while Chinese court music flourished with instruments such as the popular pipa. Tang scholars compiled a rich variety of historical literature, as well as encyclopaedias and geographical works. Notable innovations included the development of woodblock printing. Buddhism became a major influence in Chinese culture, with Chinese Buddhism gaining prominence. However, in the 840s, Emperor Wuzong enacted policies to suppress Buddhism, which subsequently declined in influence.
Emperor Gaozu (born Li Yuan) was the founder of the Tang. He was previously Duke of Tang and governor of Taiyuan, the capital of modern Shanxi, during the collapse of the Sui dynasty (581–618). Li had prestige and military experience, and was a first cousin of Emperor Yang of Sui (their mothers were both one of the Dugu sisters). Li Yuan rose in rebellion in 617, along with his son and his equally militant daughter Princess Pingyang (), who raised and commanded her own troops. In winter 617, Li Yuan occupied Chang'an, relegated Emperor Yang to the position of Taishang Huang ('retired emperor'), and acted as regent to the puppet child-emperor Yang You. On the news of Emperor Yang's murder by General Yuwen Huaji on June 18, 618, Li Yuan declared himself emperor of the newly founded Tang dynasty.
Emperor Gaozu ruled until 626, when he was forcefully deposed by his son Li Shimin, the Prince of Qin. Li Shimin had commanded troops since the age of 18, had prowess with bow and arrow, sword and lance and was known for his effective cavalry charges. Fighting a numerically superior army, he defeated Dou Jiande (573–621) at Luoyang in the Battle of Hulao on May 28, 621. Due to fear of assassination, Li Shimin ambushed and killed two of his brothers, Li Yuanji () and crown prince Li Jiancheng (), in the Xuanwu Gate Incident on July 2, 626. Shortly thereafter, his father abdicated in his favour, and Li Shimin ascended the throne. He is conventionally known by his temple name Taizong.
Although killing two brothers and deposing his father contradicted the Confucian value of filial piety, Taizong showed himself to be a capable leader who listened to the advice of the wisest members of his council. In 628, Emperor Taizong held a Buddhist memorial service for the casualties of war; in 629, he had Buddhist monasteries erected at the sites of major battles so that monks could pray for the fallen on both sides of the fight.
During the Tang campaign against the Eastern Turks, the Eastern Turkic Khaganate was destroyed after the capture of its ruler, Illig Qaghan by the famed Tang military officer Li Jing (571–649), who later became a Chancellor of the Tang dynasty. With this victory, the Turks accepted Taizong as their khagan, a title rendered as Tian Kehan in addition to his rule as emperor of China under the traditional title "Son of Heaven". Taizong was succeeded by his son Li Zhi (as Emperor Gaozong) in 649.
The Tang engaged in military campaigns against the Western Turks, exploiting the rivalry between Western Turks and Eastern Turks in order to weaken both. Under Emperor Taizong, campaigns were dispatched in the Western Regions against Gaochang in 640, Karasahr in 644 and 648, and Kucha in 648. The wars against the Western Turks continued under Emperor Gaozong, and the Western Turkic Khaganate was finally annexed after General Su Dingfang's defeat of Khagan Ashina Helu in 657. Around this time, the Tang court enjoyed visits by numerous dignitaries from foreign lands. These were depicted in the Portraits of Periodical Offering, probably painted by Yan Liben (601–673).
In 683, Emperor Gaozong died and was succeeded by Emperor Zhongzong, his eldest surviving son by Wu. Zhongzong tried to appoint his wife's father as chancellor: after only six weeks on the throne, he was deposed by Empress Wu in favour of his younger brother, Emperor Ruizong. This provoked a group of Tang princes to rebel in 684. Wu's armies suppressed them within two months. She proclaimed the Tianshou era of Wu Zhou on October 16, 690, and three days later demoted Emperor Ruizong to crown prince. He was also forced to give up his father's surname Li in favour of the Empress Wu. She then ruled as China's only empress regnant in history.
A palace coup () on February 20, 705, forced Empress Wu to yield her position on February 22. The next day, her son Zhongzong was restored to power; the Tang was formally restored on March 3. She died soon after. To legitimise her rule, she circulated a document known as the Great Cloud Sutra, which predicted that a reincarnation of the Maitreya Buddha would be a female monarch who would dispel illness, worry, and disaster from the world. She even introduced numerous revised written characters for the language, though they reverted to the original forms after her death. Arguably the most important part of her legacy was diminishing the hegemony of the Northwestern aristocracy, allowing people from other clans and regions of China to become more represented in Chinese politics and government.
The Tang reached its height during Emperor Xuanzong's 44-year reign, which has been characterized as a golden age of economic prosperity and pleasant lifestyles within the imperial court. Xuanzong was seen as a progressive and benevolent ruler, having abolished the death penalty in 747. Previously, all executions had to be approved by the emperor; in 730, there were only 24 executions. Xuanzong bowed to the consensus of his ministers on policy decisions and made efforts to staff government ministries fairly with different political factions. His staunch Confucian chancellor Zhang Jiuling (673–740) worked to reduce deflation and increase the money supply by upholding the use of private coinage, while his aristocratic and technocratic successor Li Linfu () favoured government monopoly over the issuance of coinage. After 737, most of Xuanzong's confidence rested in Li Linfu, his long-standing chancellor, who championed a more aggressive foreign policy employing non-Chinese generals. This policy ultimately created the conditions for a massive rebellion against Xuanzong.
After 710, regional military governors called jiedushi gradually came to challenge the power of the central government. After the An Lushan rebellion, the autonomous power and authority accumulated by the jiedushi in Hebei went beyond the central government's control. After a series of rebellions between 781 and 784 in present-day Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and Hubei, the government had to officially acknowledge the jiedushis hereditary rule without accreditation. The Tang government relied on these governors and their armies for protection and to suppress local revolts. In return, the central government would acknowledge the rights of these governors to maintain their army, collect taxes and even to pass on their title to heirs. As time passed, these military governors slowly phased out the prominence of civil officials drafted by exams, and became more autonomous from central authority. The rule of these powerful military governors lasted until 960, when a new civil order under the Song dynasty was established. The abandonment of the equal-field system also meant that people could buy and sell land freely; many poor fell into debt because of this and were forced to sell their land to the wealthy, which led to the exponential growth of large estates. With the breakdown of the land allocation system after 755, the central Chinese state barely interfered in agricultural management and acted merely as tax collector for roughly a millennium, save a few instances such as the Song's failed land nationalisation during the 13th-century war with the Mongols.
With the central government collapsing in authority over the various regions of the empire, it was recorded in 845 that bandits and river pirates in parties of 100 or more began plundering settlements along the Yangtze River with little resistance. In 858, massive floods along the Grand Canal inundated vast tracts of land and terrain of the North China Plain, which drowned tens of thousands of people in the process. The Chinese belief in the Mandate of Heaven granted to the ailing Tang was also challenged when natural disasters led many to believe that the Tang had lost their right to rule. In 873, a disastrous harvest shook the foundations of the empire; in some areas only half of all agricultural produce was gathered, and tens of thousands faced famine and starvation. In the earlier period of the Tang, the central government was able to meet crises in the harvest—from 714 to 719, records show that the Tang government responded effectively to natural disasters by extending the price-regulation granary system throughout the country. The central government was able then to build a large surplus stock of foods to ward off the rising danger of famine and increased agricultural productivity through land reclamation.
The last ambitious ruler of the Tang was Emperor Xianzong (), whose reign was aided by the fiscal reforms of the 780s, including a government monopoly on the salt industry. He also had an effective and well-trained imperial army stationed at the capital led by his court eunuchs; this was the Army of Divine Strategy, numbering 240,000 in strength as recorded in 798. Between 806 and 819, Emperor Xianzong conducted seven major military campaigns to quell the rebellious provinces that had claimed autonomy from central authority, managing to subdue all but two of them. Under his reign, there was a brief end to the hereditary jiedushi, as Xianzong appointed his own military officers and staffed the regional bureaucracies once again with civil officials. However, Xianzong's successors proved less capable and more interested in the leisure of hunting, feasting, and playing outdoor sports, allowing eunuchs to amass more power as drafted scholar-officials caused strife in the bureaucracy with factional parties. The eunuchs' power was not challenged following the Ganlu Incident, where Emperor Wenzong () failed in his plot to have them overthrown; instead, Wenzong's allies were publicly executed in Chang'an's West Market on the eunuchs' command.
Decades after the An Lushan rebellion, the Tang was able to muster enough power to launch offensive military campaigns, including its destruction of the Uyghur Khaganate in Mongolia from 840 to 847. The Tang managed to restore indirect control over former territories as far west as the Hexi Corridor and Dunhuang in Gansu; in 848, the general Zhang Yichao (799–872) managed to wrestle control of the region from the Tibetan Empire during its civil war. Shortly afterwards, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang () acknowledged Zhang as the protector () of Sha Prefecture, and military governor of the new Guiyi Circuit. Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 249.
Although older accounts described the Huang Chao uprising as marking the "destruction" of the Tang aristocracy, recent scholarship shows that the decline of the aristocratic advantage in officeholding had been underway long before the rebellion. Furthermore, the exact extent of the physical damage of the rebellion to the Tang elite has also been overstated. Zhou Ding (2024) argues that numerous clans re-established themselves in the Jiangnan and other southern provinces, maintaining local influence well into the tenth century. Amid the sacking of cities and continuing factional strife among eunuchs and officials, however, the court’s fiscal and administrative collapse left many of the old metropolitan families impoverished or displaced, setting the stage for the emergence of a new regional gentry under the Five Dynasties and Song.
During the last two decades of the Tang dynasty, the gradual collapse of central authority led to the rise of the rival military figures Li Keyong and Zhu Wen in northern China. Tang forces had defeated Huang's rebellion with the aid of allied Shatuo, a Turkic people of what is now Shanxi, led by Li Keyong. He was made a jiedushi, and later Prince of Jin, bestowed with the imperial surname Li by the Tang court. Zhu Wen, originally a salt smuggler who served as a lieutenant under the rebel Huang Chao, surrendered to Tang forces. By helping to defeat Huang, he was renamed Zhu Quanzhong ("Zhu of Perfect Loyalty") and granted a rapid series of promotions to military governor of Xuanwu Circuit.
In 901, from his power base of Kaifeng, Zhu Wen seized control of the Tang capital Chang'an and with it the imperial family. By 903, he forced Emperor Zhaozong of Tang to move the capital to Luoyang, preparing to take the throne for himself. In 904, Zhu assassinated Emperor Zhaozong to replace him with the emperor's young son Emperor Ai of Tang. In 905, Zhu executed the brothers of Emperor Ai as well as many officials and Empress Dowager He. In 907, the Tang dynasty was ended when Zhu deposed Ai and took the throne for himself (known posthumously as Emperor Taizu of Later Liang). He established the Later Liang, which inaugurated the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. A year later, Zhu had the deposed Emperor Ai poisoned to death.
Zhu Wen's enemy Li Keyong died in 908, having never claimed the title of emperor out of loyalty to the Tang. His son Li Cunxu (Emperor Zhuangzong) inherited his title Prince of Jin along with his father's rivalry against Zhu. In 923, Li Cunxu declared a "restored" Tang dynasty, the Later Tang, before toppling the Later Liang dynasty the same year. However, southern China remained splintered into various small kingdoms until most of China was reunified under the Song dynasty (960–1279). Control over parts of northeast China and Manchuria by the Liao dynasty of the Khitan people also stemmed from this period. In 905, their leader Abaoji formed a military alliance with Li Keyong against Zhu Wen but the Khitans eventually turned against the Later Tang, helping another Shatuo leader Shi Jingtang of Later Jin to overthrow Later Tang in 936.
The Tang Code was largely retained by later codes such as the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644) code of 1397, yet there were several revisions in later times, such as during the Song dynasty (960–1279).
The Tang had three departments (), which were obliged to draft, review, and implement policies respectively. There were also six ministries () under the administrations that implemented policy, each of which was assigned different tasks. These Three Departments and Six Ministries included the personnel administration, finance, rites, military, justice, and public works—an administrative model which lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912).
Although the founders of the Tang related to the glory of the earlier Han dynasty (202 BC220 AD), the basis for much of their administrative organisation was very similar to the previous Northern and Southern dynasties. The Northern Zhou (6th century) fubing system of divisional militia was continued by the Tang, along with farmer-soldiers serving in rotation from the capital or frontier in order to receive appropriated farmland. The equal-field system of the Northern Wei (4th–6th centuries) was also kept, although there were a few modifications.
Although the central and local governments kept an enormous number of records about land property in order to assess taxes, it became common practice in the Tang for literate and affluent people to create their own private documents and signed contracts. These had their own signature and that of a witness and scribe in order to prove in court (if necessary) that their claim to property was legitimate. The prototype of this actually existed since the ancient Han dynasty, while contractual language became even more common and embedded into Chinese literary culture in later dynasties.
The centre of the political power of the Tang was the capital city of Chang'an (modern Xi'an), where the emperor maintained his large palace quarters and entertained political emissaries with music, sports, acrobats, poetry, paintings, and Pear Garden. The capital was also filled with incredible amounts of riches and resources to spare. When the Chinese prefecture government officials travelled to the capital in 643 to give the annual report of the affairs in their districts, Emperor Taizong discovered that many had no proper quarters to rest in and were renting rooms with merchants. Therefore, Emperor Taizong ordered the government agencies in charge of municipal construction to build every visiting official his own private mansion in the capital.
Open competition was designed to draw the best talent into government. But perhaps an even greater consideration for the Tang rulers was to avoid imperial dependence on powerful aristocratic families and by recruiting a body of career officials having no family or local power base. The Tang law code ensured equal division of inherited property among legitimate heirs, encouraging social mobility by preventing powerful families from becoming landed nobility through primogeniture. Contrary to older accounts that portrayed the imperial examination as marginal in Tang times, recent quantitative research shows that by the late seventh century the jinshi degree had already become the primary route to high office, while aristocratic family pedigree had largely lost its predictive power for bureaucratic appointment.Wang, E. H., & Yang, C. Z. (2025). The Political Economy of China’s Imperial Examination System. Cambridge University Press. Open-access Cambridge University Press link. The Tang examination system thus played a decisive institutional role in displacing hereditary privilege and fostering a bureaucratic elite selected by merit. From Tang times until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, scholar-officials served as intermediaries between the people and the government, their authority deriving less from lineage than from examination success.
Emperor Xuanzong closely regulated religious finances. Near the beginning of his reign in 713, he liquidated the Inexhaustible Treasury of a prominent Buddhist monastery in Chang'an which had collected vast riches as multitudes of anonymous repentants left money, silk, and treasure at its doors. Although the monastery used its funds generously, the Emperor condemned it for fraudulent banking practices, and distributed its wealth to other Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, and to repair local statues, halls, and bridges. In 714, he forbade Chang'an shops from selling copied Buddhist sutras, giving a monopoly of this trade to the Buddhist clergy.
In the Tang census of 754, there were 1,859 cities, 321 prefectures, and 1,538 counties throughout the empire. Although there were many large and prominent cities, the rural and agrarian areas comprised 80–90% of the population. There was also a dramatic migration from northern to southern China, as the North held 75% of the overall population at the dynasty's inception, which by its end was reduced to 50%. The Chinese population would not dramatically increase until the Song dynasty, when it doubled to 100 million because of extensive rice cultivation in central and southern China, coupled with higher yields of grain sold in a growing market.
Some of the kingdoms paying tribute to the Tang dynasty included Kashmir, Nepal, Khotan, Kucha, Kashgar, Silla, Champa, and kingdoms located in Amu Darya and Syr Darya valley. Turkic nomads addressed the Tang emperor as Tian Kehan. After the widespread Göktürk revolt of Shabolüe Khan () was put down at Issyk Kul in 657 by Su Dingfang (591–667), Emperor Gaozong established several protectorates governed by a Protectorate General or Grand Protectorate General, which extended the Chinese sphere of influence as far as Herat in Western Afghanistan. Protectorate Generals were given a great deal of autonomy to handle local crises without waiting for central admission. After Xuanzong's reign, jiedushi were given enormous power, including the ability to maintain their own armies, collect taxes, and pass their titles on hereditarily. This is commonly recognised as the beginning of the fall of Tang's central government.
Although they were formerly enemies, the Tang accepted officials and generals of Goguryeo into their administration and military, such as the brothers Yŏn Namsaeng (634–679) and Yŏn Namsan (639–701). From 668 to 676, the Tang Empire controlled northern Korea. However, Silla broke the alliance in 671, and began the Silla–Tang War to expel the Tang forces. At the same time the Tang faced threats on its western border when a large Chinese army was defeated by the Tibetans on the Dafei River in 670. By 676, the Tang army was expelled out of Korea by Later Silla. Following a revolt of the Eastern Turks in 679, the Tang abandoned its Korean campaigns.
Although the Tang had fought the Japanese, they still held cordial relations with Japan. There were numerous Imperial embassies to China from Japan, diplomatic missions that were not halted until 894 by Emperor Uda (), upon persuasion by Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). The Japanese Emperor Tenmu () even established his conscripted army on that of the Chinese model, based his state ceremonies on the Chinese model, and constructed his palace at Fujiwara on the Chinese model of architecture.
Many Chinese Buddhist monks came to Japan to help further the spread of Buddhism as well. Two 7th-century monks, Zhi Yu and Zhi You, visited the court of Emperor Tenji (), whereupon they presented a gift of a south-pointing chariot that they had crafted. This vehicle employing a differential gear was reproduced in several models for Tenji in 666, as recorded in the Nihon Shoki (720). Japanese monks also visited China; such was the case with Ennin (794–864), who wrote of his travel experiences including travels along the Grand Canal. The Japanese monk Enchin (814–891) stayed in China from 839 to 847, and again from 853 to 858, landing near Fuzhou, Fujian and setting sail for Japan from Taizhou, Zhejiang during his second trip to China.
Civil war in China was almost totally diminished by 626, along with the 628 defeat of the Ordos warlord Liang Shidu; after these internal conflicts, the Tang began an offensive against the Turks. In 630, Tang armies captured areas of the Ordos Desert, modern-day Inner Mongolia province, and southern Mongolia from the Turks. After this military victory, On June 11, 631, Emperor Taizong also sent envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to persuade the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners who were captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier; this embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China.
While the Turks were settled in the Ordos region (former territory of the Xiongnu), the Tang government took on the military policy of dominating the central steppe. As during the earlier Han dynasty, the Tang and their Turkic allies conquered and subdued Central Asia during the 640s and 650s. During Emperor Taizong's reign alone, large campaigns were launched against not only the Göktürks, but also separate campaigns against the Tuyuhun, the oasis states, and the Xueyantuo. Under Emperor Gaozong, a campaign led by the general Su Dingfang was launched against the Western Turks ruled by Ashina Helu.
The Tang Empire competed with the Tibetan Kingdom for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia, which was at times settled with marriage alliances such as the marrying of Princess Wencheng () to Songtsän Gampo (). A Tibetan tradition mentions that Chinese troops captured Lhasa after Songtsän Gampo's death, but no such invasion is mentioned in either Chinese annals or the Tibetan manuscripts of Dunhuang.
There was a string of conflicts with Tibet over territories in the Tarim Basin between 670 and 692; in 763, the Tibetans captured Chang'an for fifteen days during the An Lushan rebellion. In fact, it was during this rebellion that the Tang withdrew its western garrisons stationed in what is now Gansu and Qinghai, which the Tibetans then occupied along with the territory of what is now Xinjiang. Hostilities between the Tang and Tibet continued until they signed the Changqing Treaty in 821. The terms of this treaty, including the fixed borders between the two countries, are recorded in a bilingual inscription on a stone pillar outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa.
During the Islamic conquest of Persia (633–656), the son of the last ruler of the Sasanian Empire, Peroz III and his court moved to Tang China. According to the Old Book of Tang, Peroz was made the head of a Governorate of Persia in present-day Zaranj, Afghanistan. During this conquest of Persia, the Rashidun Caliph Uthman () sent an embassy to the Tang court at Chang'an. Arab sources claim Umayyad commander Qutayba ibn Muslim briefly took Shule Kingdom from China and withdrew after an agreement, but modern historians entirely dismiss this claim. The Arab Umayyad Caliphate in 715 deposed Ikhshid, the king the Fergana Valley, and installed a new king Alutar on the throne. The deposed king fled to Kucha (seat of Anxi Protectorate), and sought Chinese intervention. The Chinese sent 10,000 troops under Zhang Xiaosong to Ferghana. He defeated Alutar and the Arab occupation force at Namangan and reinstalled Ikhshid on the throne. The Tang defeated the Arab Umayyad invaders at the Battle of Aksu (717). The Arab Umayyad commander Al-Yashkuri and his army fled to Tashkent after they were defeated. The Turgesh then crushed the Arab Umayyads and drove them out. By the 740s, the Arabs under the Abbasid Caliphate in Greater Khorasan had reestablished a presence in the Ferghana basin and in Sogdiana. At the Battle of Talas in 751, Karluks mercenaries under the Chinese defected, helping the Arab armies of the Caliphate to defeat the Tang force under commander Gao Xianzhi. Although the battle itself was not of the greatest significance militarily, this was a pivotal moment in history, as it marks the spread of Chinese papermaking into regions west of China as captured Chinese soldiers shared the technique of papermaking to the Arabs. These techniques ultimately reached Europe by the 12th century through Al-Andalus. Although they had fought at Talas, on June 11, 758, an Abbasid embassy arrived at Chang'an simultaneously with the Uyghurs bearing gifts for the Tang emperor. In 788–789 the Chinese concluded a military alliance with the Uyghur people Turks who twice defeated the Tibetans, in 789 near the town of Gaochang in Dzungaria, and in 791 near Ningxia on the Yellow River.
Joseph Needham writes that a tributary embassy came to the court of Emperor Taizong in 643 from the Patriarch of Antioch. However, Friedrich Hirth and other sinologists such as S. A. M. Adshead have identified fulin (拂菻) in the Old and New Book of Tang as the Byzantine Empire, which those histories directly associated with Daqin (i.e. the Roman Empire). The embassy sent in 643 by Boduoli () was identified as Byzantine ruler Constans II Pogonatos, and further embassies were recorded as being sent into the 8th century. Adshead offers a different transliteration stemming from "patriarch" or "patrician", possibly a reference to one of the acting for the young Byzantine monarch. The Old and New Book of Tang also provide a description of the Byzantine capital Constantinople, including how it was besieged by the Da Shi (, i.e. the Umayyad Caliphate) forces of Mu'awiya I, who forced them to pay tribute to the Arabs.
There was great interaction with India, a hub for Buddhist knowledge, with famous travellers such as Xuanzang () visiting the South Asian state. After a 17-year trip, Xuanzang managed to bring back valuable Sanskrit texts to be translated into Chinese. There was also a Turkic languages–Chinese dictionary available for serious scholars and students, while Turkic folk songs gave inspiration to some Chinese poetry. In the interior of China, trade was facilitated by the Grand Canal and the Tang government's rationalisation of the greater canal system that reduced costs of transporting grain and other commodities. The state also managed roughly of postal service routes by horse or boat.
The Tang captured the vital route through the Gilgit valley from Tibet in 722, lost it to the Tibetans in 737, and regained it under the command of the Goguryeo-Korean General Gao Xianzhi. When the An Lushan rebellion ended in 763, the Tang Empire withdrew its troops from its western lands, allowing the Tibetan Empire to largely cut off China's direct access to the Silk Road. An internal rebellion in 848 ousted the Tibetan rulers, and the Tang regained the northwestern prefectures from Tibet in 851. These lands contained crucial grazing areas and pastures for raising horses that the Tang dynasty desperately needed.
Despite the many expatriate European travellers coming into China to live and trade, many travellers, mainly religious monks and missionaries, recorded China's stringent immigrant laws. As the monk Xuanzang and many other monk travellers attested to, there were many government checkpoints along the Silk Road that examined travel permits into the Tang Empire. Furthermore, banditry was a problem along the checkpoints and oasis towns, as Xuanzang also recorded that his group of travellers were assaulted by bandits on multiple occasions.
The Silk Road also affected the art from the period. Horses became a significant symbol of prosperity and power as well as an instrument of military and diplomatic policy. Horses were also revered as a relative of the dragon.
During the Tang dynasty, thousands of foreign expatriate merchants came and lived in numerous Chinese cities to do business with China, including Persians, Arabs, Hindu Indians, Malays, Bengalis, Sinhalese people, Khmers, Chams, Jews and Nestorian Christians of the Near East. In 748, the Buddhist monk Jian Zhen described Guangzhou as a bustling mercantile business center where many large and impressive foreign ships came to dock. He wrote that "many large ships came from Borneo, Persia, Qunglun (Java) ... with ... spices, pearls, and jade piled up mountain high", as written in the Yue Jue Shu (Lost Records of the State of Yue). Relations with the Arabs were often strained: When the imperial government was attempting to quell the An Lushan rebellion, Arab and Persian pirates burned and looted Canton on October 30, 758. The Tang government reacted by shutting the port of Canton down for roughly five decades; thus, foreign vessels docked at Hanoi instead. However, when the port reopened, it continued to thrive. In 851, the Arab merchant Sulaiman al-Tajir observed the manufacturing of porcelain in Guangzhou and admired its transparent quality. He also provided a description of Guangzhou's landmarks, granaries, local government administration, some of its written records, treatment of travellers, along with the use of ceramics, rice, wine, and tea. Their presence ended in the vengeful Guangzhou massacre by the rebel Huang Chao in 878, who purportedly slaughtered thousands regardless of ethnicity. Huang's rebellion was eventually suppressed in 884.
Vessels from other East Asian states such as Silla, Balhae and the Hizen Province of Japan were all involved in the Yellow Sea trade, which Silla of Korea dominated. After Silla and Japan reopened renewed hostilities in the late 7th century, most Japanese maritime merchants chose to set sail from Nagasaki towards the mouth of the Huai River, the Yangtze River, and even as far south as the Hangzhou Bay in order to avoid Korean ships in the Yellow Sea. In order to sail back to Japan in 838, the Japanese embassy to China procured nine ships and sixty Korean sailors from the Korean wards of Chuzhou and Lianshui cities along the Huai River. It is also known that Chinese trade ships travelling to Japan set sail from the various ports along the coasts of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.
The Chinese engaged in large-scale production for overseas export by at least the time of the Tang. This was proven by the discovery of the Belitung shipwreck, a silt-preserved shipwrecked Arabian dhow in the Gaspar Strait near Belitung, which had 63,000 pieces of Tang ceramics, silver, and gold (including a Changsha bowl inscribed with a date corresponding to 826, roughly confirmed by radiocarbon dating of star anise at the wreck). Beginning in 785, the Chinese began to call regularly at Sufala on the East African coast in order to cut out Arab middlemen, with various contemporary Chinese sources giving detailed descriptions of trade in Africa. The official and geographer Jia Dan (730–805) wrote of two common sea trade routes in his day: one from the coast of the Bohai Sea towards Korea and another from Guangzhou through Malacca towards the Nicobar Islands, Sri Lanka and India, the eastern and northern shores of the Arabian Sea to the Euphrates River. In 863, the Chinese author Duan Chengshi () provided a detailed description of the slave trade, ivory trade, and ambergris trade in a country called Bobali, which historians suggest was Berbera in Somalia. In Fustat, Egypt, the fame of Chinese ceramics there led to an enormous demand for Chinese goods; hence Chinese often travelled there. From this time period, the Arab merchant Shulama once wrote of his admiration for Chinese seafaring junks, but noted that their draft was too deep for them to enter the Euphrates River, which forced them to ferry passengers and cargo in small boats. Shulama also noted that Chinese ships were often very large, with capacities up to 700 passengers.
The Tang capital was the largest city in the world at its time, with the population of its wards and suburban countryside reaching two million inhabitants. The Tang capital was very cosmopolitan, with ethnicities of Persia, Central Asia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, India, and many other places living within. Naturally, with this plethora of different ethnicities living in Chang'an, there were also many different practised religions, such as Buddhism, Nestorianism, and Zoroastrianism, among others. With the open access to China that the Silk Road to the west facilitated, many foreign settlers were able to move east to China, while the city of Chang'an itself had about 25,000 foreigners living within. Exotic green-eyed, blond-haired Tocharians ladies serving wine in agate and amber cups, singing, and dancing at taverns attracted customers. If a foreigner in China pursued a Chinese woman for marriage, he was required to stay in China and was unable to take his bride back to his homeland, as stated in a law passed in 628 to protect women from temporary marriages with foreign envoys. Several laws enforcing segregation of foreigners from Chinese were passed during the Tang. In 779, the Tang issued an edict which forced Uyghurs in the capital, Chang'an, to wear their ethnic dress, stopped them from marrying Chinese females, and banned them from passing off as Chinese.
Chang'an was the center of the central government, the home of the imperial family, and was filled with splendor and wealth. However, incidentally it was not the economic hub during the Tang dynasty. The city of Yangzhou along the Grand Canal and close to the Yangtze was the greatest economic center during the Tang.
Yangzhou was the headquarters for the Tang government's salt monopoly, and was the greatest industrial center of China. It acted as a midpoint in shipping of foreign goods to be distributed to the major cities of the north. Much like the seaport of Guangzhou in the south, Yangzhou had thousands of foreign traders from across Asia.
There was also the secondary capital city of Luoyang, which was the favoured capital of the two by Empress Wu. In 691, she had more than 100,000 families from the region around Chang'an move to Luoyang. With a population of about a million, Luoyang became the second largest city in the empire, and with its closeness to the Luo River it benefited from southern agricultural fertility and trade traffic of the Grand Canal. However, the Tang court eventually demoted its capital status and did not visit Luoyang after 743, when Chang'an's problem of acquiring adequate supplies and stores for the year was solved. As early as 736, granaries were built at critical points along the route from Yangzhou to Chang'an, which eliminated shipment delays, spoilage, and pilfering. An artificial lake used as a transshipment pool was dredged east of Chang'an in 743, where curious northerners could finally see the array of boats found in southern China, delivering tax and tribute items to the imperial court.
The Classical Prose Movement was spurred in large part by the writings of Tang authors Liu Zongyuan (773–819) and Han Yu (768–824). This new prose style broke away from the poetry tradition of piantiwen (駢體文; 'parallel prose') style begun in the Han dynasty. Although writers of the Classical Prose Movement imitated piantiwen, they criticised it for its often vague content and lack of colloquial language, focusing more on clarity and precision to make their writing more direct. This guwen (archaic prose) style can be traced back to Han Yu, and would become largely associated with orthodox Neo-Confucianism.
Short story fiction and tales were also popular during the Tang, one of the more famous ones being Yingying's Biography by Yuan Zhen (779–831), which was widely circulated in his own time and by the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) became the basis for Chinese opera. Timothy C. Wong places this story within the wider context of Tang love tales, which often share the plot designs of quick passion, inescapable societal pressure leading to the abandonment of romance, followed by a period of melancholy. Wong states that this scheme lacks the undying vows and total self-commitment to love found in Western romances such as Romeo and Juliet, but that underlying traditional Chinese values of indivisibility of self from one's environment, including from society, served to create the necessary fictional device of romantic tension. In addition, Tang literature often discussed gender expression. Literary texts such as "Tiandi yinyang jiaohuan dale fu" and "You xianku" depicted how the Tang nobility emphasized Taoist sexology.YAO, PING. “BETWEEN TOPICS AND SOURCES: Researching the History of Sexuality in Imperial China.” In Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure, edited by HOWARD CHIANG, 43. University of Washington Press, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnwj4.7. Many male Tang poets and literati conveyed their love for male companions when they perceived their wives—often illiterate—to be incapable of understanding their troubles.Hinsch, Bret. “Passions of the Cut Sleeve.” Academic Publisher. De Gruyter Brill, 1990. p. 80, https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1525/9780520912656/html.
Large encyclopaedias were published during the Tang: the Yiwen Leiju was compiled in 624 under chief editor Ouyang Xun (557–641), Linghu Defen (582–666) and Chen Shuda (). By 729, the team led by scholar Gautama Siddha (), an ethnic Indian born in Chang'an, had finished compiling the Treatise on Astrology of the Kaiyuan Era, an astrological encyclopaedia.
Chinese geographers, such as Jia Dan, wrote accurate descriptions of places far beyond Tang territory. In his work written between 785 and 805, Jia described the sea route going into the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and that the medieval Iranian peoples had erected 'ornamental pillars' in the sea that acted as lighthouse beacons for ships that might go astray. Arabic authors writing a century after Jia, such as al-Masudi and al-Maqdisi, also mentioned these structures in their accounts, confirming Jia's reports. The Tang diplomat Wang Xuance travelled to Magadha, in present-day northeast India, during the 7th century. Afterwards, he wrote the Zhang Tianzhu Guotu (Illustrated Accounts of Central India), a book which contained a large body of geographical information.
Many histories of previous dynasties were compiled between 636 and 659 by court officials during and shortly after the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang. These included the Book of Liang, Book of Chen, Book of Northern Qi, Book of Zhou, Book of Sui, Book of Jin, History of Northern Dynasties and the History of Southern Dynasties. Although not included in the official Twenty-Four Histories, the Tongdian and Tang Huiyao were nonetheless valuable written historical works of the Tang period. The Shitong written by Liu Zhiji in 710, was a meta-history that surveyed the tradition of Chinese historiography to date. The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, compiled by Bianji, recounted the journey of Xuanzang, the Tang era's most renowned Buddhist monk.
Other important literature included Duan Chengshi's () Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang, an entertaining collection of foreign legends and hearsay, reports on natural phenomena, short anecdotes, mythical and mundane tales, as well as notes on various subjects. The exact literary category or classification that Duan's large informal narrative would fit into is still debated among scholars and historians.
Buddhism, originating in India around the time of Confucius, continued its influence during the Tang period and was accepted by some members of imperial family, becoming thoroughly sinicised and a permanent part of Chinese traditional culture. In an age before Neo-Confucianism and figures such as Zhu Xi (1130–1200), Buddhism had begun to flourish in China during the Northern and Southern dynasties, and became the dominant ideology during the prosperous Tang. Buddhist monasteries played an integral role in Chinese society, offering lodging for travellers in remote areas, schools for children throughout the country, and a place for urban literati to stage social events and gatherings such as going-away parties. Buddhist monasteries were also engaged in the economy, since their land property and serfs gave them enough revenues to set up mills, oil presses, and other enterprises. Although the monasteries retained 'serfs', these monastery dependents could actually own property and employ others to help them in their work, including their own slaves.
The prominent status of Buddhism in Chinese culture began to decline as the dynasty and central government declined as well during the late 8th century to 9th century. Buddhist convents and temples that were exempt from state taxes beforehand were targeted by the state for taxation. In 845, Emperor Wuzong finally shut down 4,600 Buddhist monasteries along with 40,000 temples and shrines, forcing 260,000 Buddhist monks and nuns to return to secular] life; this episode would later be dubbed one of the Four Buddhist Persecutions in China. Although the ban was lifted just a few years after, Buddhism never regained its once dominant status in Chinese culture. This situation also came about through a revival of interest in native Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism and Taoism. Han Yu (786–824)—who Arthur F. Wright stated was a "brilliant polemicist and ardent xenophobe"—was one of the first men of the Tang to denounce Buddhism. Although his contemporaries found him crude and obnoxious, he foreshadowed the later persecution of Buddhism in the Tang, as well as the revival of Confucian theory with the rise of Neo-Confucianism of the Song dynasty. Nonetheless, Chán Buddhism gained popularity among the educated elite. There were also many famous Chan monks from the Tang era, such as Mazu Daoyi, Baizhang, and Huangbo Xiyun. The sect of Pure Land Buddhism initiated by the Chinese monk Huiyuan (334–416) was also just as popular as Chan Buddhism during the Tang.
Rivaling Buddhism was Taoism, a native Chinese philosophical and religious belief system that found its roots in the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi. The ruling Li family of the Tang dynasty actually claimed descent from Laozi, traditionally credited as the author of the Tao Te Ching. On numerous occasions where Tang princes would become crown prince or Tang princesses taking vows as Taoist priestesses, their lavish former mansions would be converted into Taoist and places of worship. Many Taoists were associated with alchemy in their pursuits to find an elixir of immortality and a means to create gold from concocted mixtures of many other elements. Although they never achieved their goals in either of these futile pursuits, they did contribute to the discovery of new metal alloys, porcelain products, and new dyes. The historian Joseph Needham labelled the work of the Taoist alchemists as "protoscience rather than pseudoscience". However, the close connection between Taoism and alchemy, which some sinologists have asserted, is refuted by Nathan Sivin, who states that alchemy was just as prominent (if not more so) in the secular sphere and practised more often by laymen.
The Tang dynasty also officially recognised various foreign religions. The Assyrian Church of the East, otherwise known as the Nestorian Church or the Church of the East in China, was given recognition by the Tang court. In 781, the Nestorian Stele was created in order to honour the achievements of their community in China. A Christian monastery was established in Shaanxi province where the Daqin Pagoda still stands, and inside the pagoda there is Christian-themed artwork. Although the religion largely died out after the Tang, it was revived in China following the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.
Although the had been responsible for transmitting Buddhism to China from India during the 2nd–4th centuries, soon afterwards they largely converted to Zoroastrianism due to their links to Sasanian Persia. Sogdian merchants and their families living in cities such as Chang'an, Luoyang, and Xiangyang usually built a Zoroastrian temple once their local communities grew larger than 100 households. Sogdians were also responsible for spreading Manicheism in China and the Uyghur Khaganate. The Uyghurs built the first Manichean monastery in China in 768; in 843, the Tang government ordered that the property of all Manichean monasteries be confiscated in response to the outbreak of war with the Uyghurs. With the blanket ban on foreign religions two years later, Manicheism was driven underground and never flourished in China again.
Traditional Chinese holidays such as Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, Cold Food Festival, and others were universal holidays. In Chang'an, there was always lively celebration, especially for the Lantern Festival since the city's nighttime curfew was lifted by the government for three days straight. Between 628 and 758, the imperial throne bestowed a total of sixty-nine grand carnivals nationwide, granted by the emperor in the case of special circumstances such as important military victories, abundant harvests after a long drought or famine, the granting of amnesties, or the instalment of a new crown prince. For special celebration in the Tang era, lavish and gargantuan-sized feasts were sometimes prepared, as the imperial court had staffed agencies to prepare the meals. This included a prepared feast for 1,100 elders of Chang'an in 664, a feast held for 3,500 officers of the Divine Strategy Army in 768, and one in 826 for 1,200 members of the imperial family and women of the palace. Alcohol consumption was a prominent facet of Chinese culture; people during the Tang drank for nearly every social event. An 8th-century court official allegedly had a serpent-shaped structure called the 'ale grotto' built on the ground floor using a total of 50,000 bricks, which featured bowls from which each of his friends could drink.
In Chang'an, ordinary courtesans inhabited the North Hamlet. They were generally knowledgeable in the rules of drinking games, and received particular training in table manners. While renowned for their politeness, courtesans were reputed to dominate conversations among elite men, and as being unafraid to openly criticise the rudeness of prominent male guests, including for talking too much, too loudly, or for boasting of their accomplishments. Courtesans were sometimes beaten by their procuring madames.唐·孙棨《北里志》：诸女自幼丐，有或佣其下里贫家。常有不调之徒，潜为渔猎，亦有良家子为其家聘之，以转求厚赂。误陷其中，则无以自脱。初教之歌令，而责之甚急，微涉退怠，则鞭朴备至。Some of these girls were beggars when they were young, and some came from poor families. There were often improper people who secretly sold the girls to brothels. Some girls from the boudoir were married into such families and sold to brothels at high prices. Once they were trapped here, there was no way to get out by themselves. At first, these girls were taught to sing, and then they were quickly reprimanded. If they were a little negligent, they would be whipped with a whip.
Gējìs, or professional singing courtesans, were culturally prominent, and joined talent agencies called jiaofang. The emperor selected particularly talented women from the outer jiaofang to form the spring court, who were supplemented by courtesans from other troupes. During the Tang, singing courtesans who were also talented in the poetry. In addition to singing, some courtesans composed their own songs, and even popularised a new form of lyrical verse that incorporated quotations of famous historical figures.
It was fashionable for women to have full figures; men enjoyed the presence of assertive, active women. The foreign horse-riding sport of polo from Persia became a wildly popular trend among the Chinese elite, and women often played the sport (as glazed earthenware figurines from the time period portray). The preferred hairstyle for women was to bunch their hair up like "an elaborate edifice above the forehead", while affluent ladies wore extravagant head ornaments, combs, pearl necklaces, face powders, and perfumes. A 671 law attempted to force women to wear hats with veils again in order to promote decency, but these laws were ignored as some women started wearing caps and even no hats at all, as well as men's riding clothes and boots, and tight-sleeved bodices.
There were some prominent court women after the era of Empress Wu, such as Yang Guifei (719–756), who had Emperor Xuanzong appoint many of her relatives and cronies to important ministerial and martial positions.
In ancient times, the Chinese had outlined the five most basic foodstuffs known as the five grains: sesamum, , wheat, millet, and glutinous millet. The Ming dynasty encyclopedist Song Yingxing noted that rice was not counted among the five grains from the time of the legendary and deified Chinese sage Shennong (the existence of whom Yingxing wrote was "an uncertain matter") into the 2nd millennium BC, because the properly wet and humid climate in southern China for growing rice was not yet fully settled or cultivated by the Chinese. Song Yingxing also noted that in the Ming dynasty, seven tenths of civilians' food was rice. During the Tang dynasty rice was not only the most important staple in southern China, but had also become popular in the north where central authority resided.
During the Tang dynasty, wheat replaced the position of millet and became the main staple crop. As a consequence, wheat cake shared a considerable amount in the staple of Tang. There were four main kinds of cake: steamed cake, boiled cake, pancake, and Hu cake. Steamed cake was consumed commonly by both civilians and aristocrats. Like rougamo in modern Chinese cuisine, steamed cake was usually stuffed with meat and vegetables. Boiled cake was the staple of the Northern Dynasties, and it kept its popularity in the Tang dynasty. It included a wide variety of dishes similar to modern wonton, noodles, and many other kinds of food that soak wheat in water. While aristocrats favoured wonton, civilians usually consumed noodles and noodle slice soup that were easier to produce. Pancakes was rare in China before the Tang, when it gained popularity. Hu cake was extremely popular during the Tang. Hu cake was toasted in the oven, covered with , and served at taverns, inns and shops. Japanese Buddhist monk Ennin observed that Hu cake was popular among all of China's civilians.
During the Tang, the many common foodstuffs and cooking ingredients in addition to those already listed were barley, garlic, salt, turnips, soybeans, pears, apricots, peaches, apples, pomegranates, jujubes, rhubarb, hazelnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, yams, taro, etc. The various meats that were consumed included pork, chicken, lamb (especially preferred in the north), sea otter, bear (which was hard to catch, but there were recipes for steamed, boiled, and marinated bear), and even . In the south along the coast meat from seafood was by default the most common, as the Chinese enjoyed eating cooked jellyfish with cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, cardamom, and ginger, as well as with wine, fried squid with ginger and vinegar, and Portunus, shrimp and pufferfish, which the Chinese called "river piglet".
From the trade overseas and over land, the Chinese acquired peaches from Samarkand, date palms, pistachios, and figs from Persia, and ginseng roots from Korea and from Southeast Asia. In China, there was a great demand for sugar; during the reign of Harsha over northern India (), Indian envoys to the Tang brought two makers of sugar who successfully taught the Chinese how to cultivate sugarcane. Cotton also came from India as a finished product from Bengal, although it was during the Tang that the Chinese began to grow and process cotton, and by the Yuan dynasty it became the prime textile fabric in China.
Some foods were food taboo, as the Tang court encouraged people not to eat beef. This was due to the role of the bull as a valuable working animal. From 831 to 833, Emperor Wenzong even banned the slaughter of cattle on the grounds of his religious convictions to Buddhism.
Methods of food preservation were important, and practised throughout China. The common people used simple methods of preservation, such as digging deep ditches and trenches, brining, and salting their foods. The emperor had large ice pits located in the parks in and around Chang'an for preserving food, while the wealthy and elite had their own smaller ice pits. Each year the emperor had labourers carve 1000 blocks of ice from frozen creeks in mountain valleys, each block with dimensions . Frozen delicacies such as chilled melon were enjoyed during the summer.
There were many other mechanical inventions during the Tang era. These included a tall mechanical wine server created during the early 8th century in the shape of an artificial mountain, carved out of iron and rested on a -wooden tortoise frame. This intricate device used a hydraulic pump that siphoned wine out of metal Chinese dragon-headed faucets, as well as tilting bowls that were timed to dip wine down, by force of gravity when filled, into an artificial lake that had intricate iron leaves popping up as trays for placing party treats. Furthermore, as the historian Charles Benn describes it:
Yet the use of a teasing mechanical puppet in this wine-serving device was not exactly a novel invention of the Tang, since the use of mechanical puppets in China date to the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC). In the 3rd century Ma Jun had an entire mechanical puppet theatre operated by the rotation of a waterwheel. There are many stories of used in the Tang, including general Yang Wulian's wooden statue of a monk who stretched his hands out to collect contributions; when the number of coins reached a certain weight, the mechanical figure moved his arms to deposit them in a satchel. This weight-and-lever mechanism was exactly like Heron's penny slot machine. Other devices included one by Wang Ju, whose "wooden otter" could allegedly catch fish; Needham suspects a spring trap of some kind was employed here.
In the realm of structural engineering and technical Chinese architecture, there were also government standard building codes, outlined in the early Tang building code Yingshan Ling. Fragments of this book have survived in the Tang Lü (Tang Code), while the Song dynasty architectural manual of the Yingzao Fashi by Li Jie (1065–1101) in 1103 is the oldest existing technical treatise on Chinese architecture that has survived in full. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (712–756), there were 34,850 registered craftsmen serving the state, managed by an agency for palace buildings.
Since the time of the Han, the Chinese had drilled deep to transport natural gas from bamboo pipelines to stoves where cast iron evaporation pans boiled brine to extract salt. During the Tang dynasty, a gazetteer of Sichuan province stated that at one of these 'fire wells', men collected natural gas into portable bamboo tubes which could be carried around for dozens of kilometres and still produce a flame. These were essentially the first ; Robert Temple assumes some sort of tap was used for this device.
The inventor Ding Huan () of the Han dynasty invented a rotary fan for air conditioning. In 747, Emperor Xuanzong had a "Cool Hall" built in the imperial palace, which Tang Yulin described as having water-powered fan wheels for air conditioning as well as rising jet streams of water from fountains. During the subsequent Song dynasty, written sources mentioned the rotary fan as even more widely used.
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