Thesis
The reformed educational system promoted change in China and created new opportunities for social, cultural and economic development which led to modernity in the Song period. As the most important, education opened new possibilities for wide population and improved knowledge and skills of the nation. It promoted technological innovations and art, cultural changes and relations with other states. As with other elite cultural movements of the highly educated at other times and in other places, the scholar-officials took pride in reactive or counter values, rejecting decorative qualities, technical skill, obvious impact or appeal to sentiment or emotion.
Main text
Educational reform promoted technological experiments and investigations in different spheres of life and science. Technological innovation was as important and even more distinctive of Song China–as social and economic change. The great inventions of the Song–the magnetic maritime compass, printing with woodblocks and movable clay type, gunpowder and firearms, and large-scale porcelain production–had worldwide importance when they spread eventually to the rest of the world and profound consequences for China in the economic, military, and social realms (Ebrey 13). Song China was the most technologically advanced state of its time, and the accompanying changes in social and economic organization were almost as significant, including large-scale manufacturing, interregional and international trade, and market-based economies. In the closely related cultural realm, Song China became a center of education and of information distribution, especially through the medium of printed books (Embree 34).
Of equal importance for cultural history were artistic institutional reforms, including the training of artists at the National University and the establishment of competitive examinations for painters, as well as the publication of catalogs of imperial collections of ancient bronzes and paintings. the Jin regime claimed both political and cultural leadership over northern China, including patronage and preservation of the culture of highly educated gentlemen that had emerged during the late eleventh century, through the encouragement of scholars and poets. The Southern Song regime was under continuing diplomatic and military pressure from the north, first from the Jurchen and later from the Mongol conquerors of the Jin (Embree 39). The Mongols largely completed their conquest of China in 1276 when they took Hangzhou and the beleaguered last Song emperor threw himself into the sea. The precarious situation of the Southern Song court at Hangzhou, in terms both of military security and political legitimacy, encouraged a certain escapism and awareness of transience as a cultural style. Nonetheless, in society at large, the growth of a commercial economy, handicraft industries, and a diverse urban life continued unabated, continuing the shift of centers of economic and cultural life to southeastern China (Ebrey 19).
No technology had a larger impact on Song and later culture than that of printing, using engraved woodblocks, and including some experiments with clay movable type. The spread of education in the Song was founded on printed books, which offered opportunities for a standardization of culture. Printed pictures also played an important role in conveying information about archaeology and art in books such as an illustrated catalog of the Song imperial collection of bronze antiquities.
The late Song-period Meihua xishen pu, compiled by Song Boren and published in 1261, was an illustrated catalog of plants, the first in what was to be a long and distinguished series of manuals that could serve as pattern books for painters and decorators (Embree 31). Printed books could also record and disseminate information about architectural construction and design, as in the Yingzao fashi (Building Standards) in thirty-four chapters, compiled by the superintendent of construction at the late Northern Song court of Emperor Huizong, one Li Jie, and published in 1103. As a government manual, the text reflects a Song tendency toward standardization and classification in the arts. As Song society became more urbanized, commercial, and bureaucratic, the complexity of social roles and structures also increased. Along with technical innovations, another useful way of thinking about Song art is in terms of its social environment: the interests, tastes, and economic capacities of both the producers and consumers of art.
Conclusion
This period can be seen as modernity because educational reforms promoted new sense of style and taste in art objects that could serve as a marker of status and wealth, but also of intellectual interests and even of claims to moral qualities. The imperial family and their aristocratic relatives continued many patterns of earlier courtly taste, including command of the most precious materials, favoring the highest levels of technique, craftsmanship, and refined design, and promotion of ideologies of authority and traditional culture (Ebrey 17). Compared to earlier periods, however, Song courtly taste was less oriented to luxury goods and opulence, and more involved with displays of refinement and high culture, features that suggest the infiltration of scholarly values into court arenas (Embree 32).
In sum, the Song period was a period of modernity influenced by educational reforms which promoted a new sense of tastes and style, supported scientific discoveries and experiments, training and education of diverse populations. Educated scholar-officials seem conscious to have sought to differentiate themselves from both courtly modes above and popular urban taste.
Works Cited
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley et al. East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Embree, A. Th. Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching. Armonk: ME Sharpe, Inc, 1997.