Selection of the high officials
To reorganize the administration, which had disintegrated during the period of the Five Dynasties, Bye gave into force the system of the imperial examinations, organized from now on in a regular way every three years in each district, according to a principle which was to remain the same one until their abolition at the beginning of the XXe century. The candidates, to which one subjected several subjects of essay drawn from traditional Confucian, remained locked up several days in tiny cells. The award-winnings (two hundreds on several thousands) could have access to highest loads and constituted this gentilhommery of civils servant (well-read men, mandarins), who, except for a short eclipse under Yuan, were going to control only China during centuries.  

During XIIe century, the system was supplemented by the creation of colleges and a university of State, where the studies, strong pushes, were sanctioned by monthly controls and biennial reviews.  

The rise of the campaigns
As of the beginnings of the reign of You have-tsou, the agricultural production knew a notable increase (improvement of the techniques, mills, irrigations), so that the Chinese population was to reach during the course of XIIe century a hundred million inhabitants (either twice as much as in VIIIe century). The country condition by itself remained however very miserable because, contrary to Sui or Tang, Song did not undertake a great land reform; the ground belonged entirely to big landowners. This situation, made more critical by a general inflation, called energetic measurements: to the XI E century, daring Wang Ngan-che (1021-1086), chief of a “reforming party”, tackled the commercial monopolies with the profit them small traders and made be given the little farmers substantial appropriations. At the same time, the wages of the civils servant were largely raised so that they do not have temptation to be devoted to exactions. A party reactionary was drawn up soon against Wang and managed to destroy all its work. In 1102, the era of the reforms had lived.  

Urban life under Song
The social regroupings characteristic of the time of Song appeared by the appearance of an intense urban life.  

The urban organization
In vast urban areas traced with the chalk line, sometimes broad avenues several tens of meters prevented the propagation of the fires (most houses were out of wood). Besides the State maintained an important body firemen equipped very well. On lathes built with each crossroads, bells sounded every hour of the day and the night. At seven hours, the population was waked up and the open doors.  

Inhabitants
The various trades, gathered in guilds, were distributed according to well defined districts; particular vestimentary accessories made it possible to recognize with the first glance the trade of such or tel. A multiplicity of restaurants served as the dishes of all the provinces, with a pair of rods and a paper napkin. The service of the refuse was ensured by contractors. Social works developed under the Buddhist influence (hospital, orphanages, houses of old man, undertaker's for the poor). Many clubs and companies gathered the amateurs of poetry, the players or the merchants simply eager to meet. In general, parvenu as well as pretty wits were found in the houses of tea or in the courtesans in reputation, whose role in the company was of foreground. On the other hand of this coloured existence, the cities sheltered a whole fauna of pickpockets, procurers and forgers.  

Festivals
The many festivals distributed along the year made it possible to the people to forget the preoccupations with an active existence. Most popular were the festival of Spring, that of the Third Month, the birthday of the birth of the Buddha and the festival of the Lanterns, the latter being held every month. Certain official ceremonies proceeding in the capital were honoured with the presence of the emperor. Greatest attraction was the elephants sent in tribute by the small vassal States of the South-East Asia.

The invasion of China of North
Khitan sinicized founded in Mongolia and Mandchourie a dynasty Liao, reversed soon and replaced in the septentrional borders by a vassal tribe, that of Jin (Jürchen). The latter were hardly carried to compromise. Hardly they had subjected their former Masters whom they invaded China of North, seized the emperor Huizong (Houei-tsong), obliging the court to give up its capital of Kaifeng, close to the Jaune river, to take refuge in 1127 in Hangzhou, more than two hundred kilometers in the south of Yangzi (Bleu river), the southernmost point never selected for an imperial capital.  

Birth of a new civilization
Once driven back in the south, Song seem to have given up any desire to reconquer North. Besides the importance taken by the southernmost areas during the previous centuries made it possible to constitute a State much more coherent there than the Five Dynasties of the South had not been able to do it. The court, the aristocracy and the merchants let themselves go to the softness of living, building a civilization of an extreme refinement, very whole round towards art and the pleasure.

The arrival of the Mongols
In spite of periodicals and short increase with the power of a “militarist party”, there were hardly conflicts with Jin. Indeed, Song were placed (as with Liao), under their vassalage; the treaty of 1165 put the two States on an equal footing. The invasion of the empire of Jin by the Mongols (1210) made one moment to accept the Chinese whom they were removed from awkward neighbors, illusion maintained moreover by the suspension the conquest. Under the control of a genious adventurer, Kia Sseutao, which created in particular nationalized grounds intended for the budget of the army, one could even hope for a national rebirth. In fact, it resulted a greater social strain from it. Injured by these measurements, the aristocracy almost accommodated with relief the Mongols when those penetrated finally in Hangzhou in 1279. All China was then placed for nearly one century under the barbarian yoke.  
 
The civilization of Song

Never China had known such a cultural and artistic blooming. The development of great urban centres (Kaifeng, Hangzhou) gave to birth to a vast urban aristocracy civils servant and merchants (better allowed from now on in the well-read men mediums), who cultivated until excess the pleasure of the moment present, like nothing to lose last hours preceding the storm.  

Economic development
The urban and agricultural development, and the considerable growth of the population in the South were accompanied by real progress in the technical field (mining industry, metallurgy, shipyards). The domestic trade as the foreign trade developed considerably.  

The most important exchanges were done with the nomads of North (Liao then Jin), but China remained in close contact with all the Southern Asia, to India. To marry his/her daughter with an Indian “capitalist” of Canton or Hangzhou was an excellent business: the foreign districts multiplied in all the ports, where was carried out most of the foreign trade (exports of tea, the Silk route) and especially porcelain: the Song celadons were spread in the whole world). Parallel to the trade appreciably, the financial and banking activities increased: one printed a large number of banknotes, carrying a serial number as well as the mention “any counterfeiter will be decapitated”.  

The Song thought
After a long stagnation, Chinese philosophy developed again under Song.

Political thinkers
For the first time, one could speak about parties (“reforming” and “preserving”), which gathered their political theories in works of the most interest. The thinker the most original remainder large syncretistic Tchou Hi (1130-1200), which introduced into the Confucianism of the elements taoists (inter alia the concept of you have-ki, the “supreme ridge”) and Buddhists. Its interpretation of traditional was to prevail to the XX E century. The well-read men Confucianists devoted themselves in addition to a number impressing of work of scholarship, whose most invaluable tche you ong kien is Tseu (“mirror to help to control”), immense encyclopedia written by Sseu-my Kouang (1019-1086), one of the most savage adversaries of Wang Ngan-che, where the author makes a masterly table of Chinese civilization since the origins.  

Essay writers
The large essay writers of the time of Song, very many, mark a return to prose sober and clear of Tang such as Han Yu had illustrated. A choice place returns to the three Penny: the father, Penny Siun, and the two sons, Penny Che and Sou Flip-flop-p' O. All three innovated while introducing into their writings of the turns and the popular expressions, without never however falling into vulgarity. Penny Flip-flop-p' O (1036-1101), especially, is one of largest well-read men the according to the Chinese ideal. He was indeed the Master of the painting of bamboos at the same time as a large poet who could bring to his works a freshness and a spontaneousness unknown factors of the great classics.  

Poetic academism
Except for Penny Flip-flop-p' O, the Song time hardly had large poets, although all took a real pleasure to take part in the poetic contests, which unfortunately caused a harmful academism: one any more but does not think of plundering the Old ones “to turn of the worms” to the mode. The poetry of Song is charming, certainly, but hardly creative. The great innovation lies in kind pi-ki, or “notes of the brush”, used by more the great authors to speak about all and nothing (of their country villa until studies on the technique of printing works or of deep philosophical reflections).

Art under Song

In peace with itself, and buying peace with its neighbors, China of Song put world under investigation and rediscovered the universe of the feelings and imagination, one moment eclipsed by the positivism of Tang. The philosophical intuition was combined with a major creative energy to carry Chinese art to the one of its more high summits, in a favorable climate with the esthetes: all the emperors of the dynasty of Song were patrons, if not artists themselves.  

Architecture and sculpture
The intellectual effervescence of the Song time appeared on the artistic level by the appearance of a certain number of theoretical works. Ying-tsao annoys (manual of architecture), in particular, constitutes an invaluable document, thanks to which we have a good knowledge of architecture under Song. The robust and massive buildings of Tang succeed of the gracious and slim forms. Under the influence of the South-East Asia, the fashion of the bent roofs gains little by little the capital.  

The Buddhist monuments most prestigious of the time are however the work of the Barbarians of North, Liao and Jin, more carried to the devotion. In North, the sculpture remains primarily Buddhist besides. Less powerful than under Tang, it yields to them in expression. The draped masterly ones give one seizing impression of life. The representations of Kouanyin (female demonstration of the Buddha of compassion), far from expressing pity, seem haughty and scornful, but their power of consolation is some reinforced. Buddhism had been struck hard by the persecution of 845. It was not the same of the sect Tch' year (in Japanese: Zen), deprived of clerical organization and primarily quietist. Tch' year played under Song a determining role, the more so as it agreed to the ideals of the time (spiritual release and purity of the heart).  

Painting: the golden age of the “landscape”
Painting Tch' year, stripped to the extreme, used only paper and black ink; the feature remained very close to penmanship, with an unequalled intensity. The portraits of arhats (holy Buddhist) and hermits translate best the mystic Tch' year. More seizing are due to Leang K' have (active around 1200). Another monk, Slackness-k' I (1200-1250), left “monkeys” but it is especially famous for its “six khaki”.  

Theorists
Apart from painting Tch' year continues the great tradition landscape designer, of which the first century of Song constitutes the golden age. The large theorist King Hao, who lived under the Five Dynasties, is however very representative of the tendencies illustrated by the Song artists. Taking again the six principles of Sie Ho with more pushed logic, it not inevitably supports that, to express the major truth of nature, the artist must remain realistic, in the brushstroke, but in the overall concept (that a man is not taller than a tree, than of the flowers which do not flower at the same season are not represented on the same table, etc), according to the taoist attitude of universal harmony. Another theorist, Chen Koua, condemn in his Remarks of brush of the brook of the dreams the effects of prospect, considered as an obstacle with the expression: “The landscapes must be seen in their totality, in order to distinguish the part of it.”  

Semi Gives
Many artists, such Li Tch' eng, Siu CAT-ning, Fank' ouan, will build during XIe century a new vision of nature, of a high and dramatic design. The painting of the well-read men is represented in an ideal way by Mi Gives (or Semi Fei, 1051-1107), jealous collector and eccentric calligrapher who only came to painting extremely late (and very marked by penmanship); of difficult and odd nature, of a completely independent spirit, even with respect to its imperial patron Houei-tsong, Insane Mi painted by pure pleasure in a very original style: contours of its mountains were illustrated not by features but by aligned spots, the “points of Semi”. Too much independent to make a good civil servant, Mi Insane knew a career the most animated of. It was the same for his close friend Sou Flip-flop-p' O, great man of letters in addition remained the painter of bamboos more appreciated.  

The imperial Academy of painting
A contemporary the Semi one Gives, Li Length-mien (or Li Kong-flax, 1040-1106), was the best portraitist of Song: he had inherited the line undulating Wu CAT-tseu. The reign of Houei-tsong (1101-1125), generous but too demanding patron, accomplished artist itself (he excelled painting the birds and had controlled a very personal style calligraphic), was marked by the creation of the imperial Academy of painting, which had, alas! to play in the Chinese art history a rather negative part. After the invasion of North by the Barbarians and the exodus towards the south, the Academy will remain all-powerful and often prevent the blooming of original talents. It however allowed the creation of a considerable number of charming if not brilliant works. Two great names illustrated it: My Yuan (XII E century) and Hia Kouei (XIII E century), founders of the school My-hia. These two artists left a romantic interpretation of triumphing nature, so much so that the Western critic a long time saw in their school the gasoline even of Chinese art.

Song ceramics
Under Song, the productions of the potters, intended for a intellectual elite, remained unequalled by the purity of their forms and their colors (monochromic for the majority). In the capital of North existed already workshops charged to manufacture a “official ceramics” (kouan). After the transfer of the court to Hangzhou, the area located around the capital fills of production centres of the “imperial porcelain”. Unfortunately, a large number of these parts are known only by catalogs of collectors or treaties specialized. For most sandstone under glazes, ceramics was classified according to their forms and their let us tons. The quality of the touch and the sonority of the object also constituted fundamental criteria for the amateurs. The “ting” (covered white creams), the “tch' have” (“blue like the sky after the rain”), of which there remains no specimen, and the celadons “jou” were particularly appreciated. The latter, which sometimes have under the glaze a light relief with reason for flowers or birds, were copied of Annam in Korea; as of the time of Song, they were exported in all Asia.