Comments on: China Under the Song Dynasty

By: David Frum on Song-Dynasty China « Against Dumb

David Frum on Song-Dynasty China « Against Dumb — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:26:24 +0000

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By: larry

larry — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:48:48 +0000

David should not be surprised at the accounts of cannibalism. We are all descendants of what was once a virtually universal practice, according to recent anthropology. Herodotus, with his usual urbanity, recounts one ritual discovered among his interesting subjects: on the death of one’s father, the father and other animals were butchered, cooked in the same pot, and consumed. This was thought to have many salutory consequences, although Herodotus has no time to explore them, having to move on: “Anyway….”

By: easton

easton — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:30:11 +0000

Actually, the Song dynasty was divided into two parts, the Northern Song dynasty 960–1127, and the Southern Song 1127–1279. Kaifeng and Hangzhou are very different cities, and the people speak (and spoke) different languages and had very different customs. In the North during the Southern Song the Jin 1115–1234 held sway. The reason for the disparity of the dates is that Kaifeng was captured in 1127, and the Jin were defeated by the Mongols earlier than the Southern Song.

I lived in Hangzhou for a time and visited the Song dynasty theme park on the outskirts of the city, which detailed the lives of people at that time (think of it as a Chinese Colonial Williamsburg).

By: JonF

JonF — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:51:01 +0000

The nadir of Europe was the 7th century (600s AD). The population had cratered after a series of natural disasters in the preceding century (this was global and affected China too: the Tang Empire had its height was less populous than the Han had been centuries earlier– we have census records from both). The great cities of antiquity had become ghost towns. Even Constantinople was down to a mere 30,000 inhabitants., and outside imperial circles the economy had collapsed back to barter level. The Byzantine Empire lost 2/3 of its territory to the expanding armies of Islam. Its European territories were overrun by Slavs, Avars and Lombards. The papacy was corrupt, and little more than a prize Rome’s surviving great families fought and poisoned over. The Frankish kings were powerless, Spain and England were divided into quarreling mini-kingdoms, and Germany and the rest of the north was still sunk in tribal barbarism.
Compared to that abyss, 1000 was a happy and prosperous age.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:13:21 +0000

Arab visitors to Chinese cities were shocked by the poor standards of hygiene, and especially repulsed by the failure of the Chinese to clean themselves adequately after defecating.
Muslims were taught ritual washing with water after a call of nature. They would have considered our modern American custom of wiping with dry toilet paper (which was invented by the Chinese) to be “shockingly poor hygiene” as well. A Muslim visitor to China once remarked:

“They (the Chinese) are not careful about cleanliness, and they do not wash themselves with water when they have done their necessities; but they only wipe themselves with paper.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper

Well, so do many of us Americans. No bidets in most public bathrooms in the United States.