Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
between the historical records about the period and the episodes
immortalized in the novel.
Brief and tenuous unity was achieved in A.D. 280 by a state called
Western Jin, which tried once again to restore feudalism to China. Like
Wang Mang's attempt, this ended in utter failure, and the Jin
government lost half its territory to Xiongnu invaders. The Jin
government then had to flee fromLoyang, its original capital, toNanjing
(Nanking), where it lingered on for a few more decades before being
overthrown. Thereafter China was divided along north-south lines,
with a series of short-lived native Chinese dynasties in the south
with Nanjing as their capital, and an even more abysmal succession of
barbarian dynasties in the north. China was a deeply divided and
chaotic nation during this time, and the people of northern and southern
China began to wonder if their once-great civilization would ever be
unified again. Northern and southern Chinese began to develop cultural
differences and to develop prejudices toward one another, some of
which still exist today.
Life was hard in China during this period. National unity was lost,
and the transportation and communication infrastructure of Han
times fell into ruins. Money largely went out of circulation and the
economy reverted to barter. (Transition from a monetarized economy
to a barter system frequently entails a drastic drop in standard of
living.) During this period, pastoral nomadic peoples first swept down
into China and ruled directly over portions of it. During the Han, the
Xiongnu seldom if ever took territory away from China and ruled over
it themselves; the Xiongnu and the pastoral nomads of their day were
not sophisticated enough to learn the art and science of efficiently gov-
erning a sedentary society. During the Period of Division, however,
some pastoral nomads learned the Chinese civilizational arts and
began competently governing Chinese territories they had conquered.
Thus a pattern of “conquest dynasties” developed during this period,
and such dynasties were to be very influential and important in the
last thousand years of imperial Chinese history.
During the Period of Division, two foreign cultural influences began
percolating into China: pastoral nomadic and Buddhistic. Buddhism,
from India, was from a unique and manifestly non-Chinese civiliza-
tion, and the northern barbarian dynasties were run by pastoral
nomads, who were different in language, culture, and ecology. Some
Chinese feared that these twin cultural influences would dilute or
completely overwhelm Chinese civilization, but it never happened.
When China was reunified in the 580s, it emerged with its civilization
intact. Buddhism and the material culture of the barbarians (musical
