During the Tang dynasty, which lasted from the seventh to the early 10th century, Vikings were raiding the coasts of what is now Europe. In the small archipelago known today as Britain, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms rose and fell. Meanwhile, in Mesoamerica, after 3,000 years of flourishing, the Maya civilisation was collapsing. In the east, China had been united for nine centuries, and the Tang dynasty was already a proverbial high point of world culture.
The Tang dynasty reached an incredible level of social and cultural sophistication. There were advances in science and medicine, sublime poetry, mystical paintings, high fashion in women’s clothing beyond the palace walls, exquisite ceramics and pottery, the invention of gunpowder and printing, highly elaborate cuisine, creative urban design, and much more. It was a truly cosmopolitan empire with dynamic diplomatic relations with neighbouring kingdoms.
When I think about this, an urge arises in me: a kind of duty, if you like, to write about this era. The Tang stands in sharp contrast to the image of a self-enclosed, inward-looking China that the West has long liked to promote. An open, cosmopolitan melting pot, it was the eastern centre into which flowed the riches of the silk roads that stretched all the way to the Byzantine empire.
But still, why the Tang? And why learn about the Tang from me? I have my own story to tell, which makes no pretence to objectivity. My story involves a specific, passionate reconnection with my own heritage. I wanted to return to China after a long absence. The last time I was there had been a decade before, along with my then three-month-old child, Moon. My desire to go back was partly for her, now 11 years old. So she and I set off on a journey back to the cultural womb from which I had emerged and had left behind. I had to explain the Chinese past not only to the child, but to myself.
Xi’an
Our journey began in Xi’an, the capital of the Tang dynasty. A high-speed train had brought us from Beijing on a searingly hot day in July. On the road, the tarmac glistened and oozed out its black heat, while the city roared in full force with an immense river of traffic.
I had booked a traditional-looking hotel, thinking we should taste more of the old China. When we reached the hotel, we had to squeeze ourselves in between a gang of businessmen all wearing black suits with alcohol-flushed faces. They spoke at high volume, while coughing and hawking. Was it a gathering for people with respiratory illnesses? I could smell their strong cigarettes from several metres away. With “no smoking” signs in the lobby, they stood by the hotel gate puffing away while cracking loud jokes. They spoke Shanxi dialect and I could vaguely make out that their laughter was to do with food and women. How familiar all this was; men in suits, chain-smoking, looking for girls – the kind of stuff that came with the recent wealth from the “Chinese miracle”. Where were the women, though? As usual, women worked. The receptionist and the manager were women. They gave us the room key after taking our money.
Our room reeked of smoke; even the white bedding. We wanted to venture out immediately. We jumped into an air-conditioned taxi and set off to find some famous landmarks.
An hour later we were standing by the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Moon hid under a nearby pomegranate tree, sucking an ice lolly, her chestnut-coloured hair tangled with sweat. Beyond the deafening sound of cicadas high up in the tree, the heat formed a shimmering layer of pink fog above the pagoda. Sweat was dripping from my eyebrows, obscuring my vision.
View image in fullscreenThe Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an. Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy
Everyone in China knows that Xi’an is one of the oldest cities in the country. It’s our Rome or Athens. Over a 2,000-year period, it served as the capital for several dynasties, though it was called Chang’an back then. Traces of the Tang are everywhere. Like many other old monuments, the Giant Wild GooThe Pagoda we see today is not the original. It was first built in the early seventh century during the Tang dynasty, restored in the eighth century, and then rebuilt in the sixteenth century after an earthquake. Made of brick and wood, its facade features intricate sculptures and carvings along the eaves. We joined a stream of tourists around the tall tower, but we couldn’t go inside because it’s too fragile to handle crowds.
Moon was born and raised in England. She had never experienced this kind of climate, or such crowds pressing in around her. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I worried she might get heatstroke. We hopped from the shade of one tree to the next until we made it out of the park.
Once outside, we leaned against the ancient city walls, grateful for the bit of shade. I read that the wall is 14 kilometers long and was mainly built during the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century. But the original wall was from the Tang dynasty. Xi’an is a great palimpsest, layered with the lives of many cultures. This is very different from Rome or Athens, which are full of original ruins. In China, nothing is allowed to remain as ruins—the government either recreates what it believes was the original or builds something entirely new. Ruins cannot exist under communism.
Numbers
We wandered through a street market, looking at all kinds of Chinese vegetables. We ate stir-fried potato strips with vinegar and chili.
“What’s this, Mum?” Moon poked a plate of white vegetables with her chopsticks.
“They’re lotus root slices. Try some!”
This trip made me think about my own relationship with China, and also my daughter’s. Such an immense past. I wondered how I could teach her about it. What could it mean to her? Moon was English, or British—her first language was English, despite my ongoing efforts to fill her ears with my native tongue. Those efforts had only modest success. Moon could understand my Chinese, but it was as if the language had never sunk beneath her skin. In England, at the end of a school day, she would tell me, “I find history hard to enjoy.” I would reply, “If you don’t know your history, you won’t know who you are!” And I heard myself say to her, “We can learn from the brilliance of the past, and one example is the Tang.”
But what did I really mean by that? Was I trying to convince myself as much as my daughter?
We spent the evening in one of the city squares, eating half a watermelon. We squatted by the flowerbeds and watched elderly couples dancing under the streetlights. The music—very kitschy 1980s Chinese songs—blasted in our ears. So at the top of my lungs I screeched at Moon about the ancient past, sounding not unlike the lectures delivered in a re-education camp.
“In the beginning, Xi’an was a Stone Age village. Then a long, long time ago, about 3,000 years ago, it became the center of a kingdom. Didn’t you learn about the Trojan War in ancient Greece? That was around the same time.”
I was already struggling, but I kept going. “One of those earlier dynasties, the Zhou, was the founding dynasty of this area.” Moon started looking around, clearly bored. I paused, feeling a rising anguish.
“The Qin emperor—Shi Huang—decided to design his capital. It was called Xian-yang then, northwest of Xi’an. He built many palaces and unified the Chinese writing system. That was 2,000 years ago. You know, he was the same one who started building the Great Wall of China.”
Portrait of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images
Moon spat out a few watermelon seeds. I searched desperately for something more dramatic.
“But he also burned a great number of books and buried scholars alive… Can you believe that?”
“Horrible! Poor scholars!” Moon cried. “Why did he do that?”
“Well, because he wanted to control people’s thoughts. ManyEmperors and dictators have done similar things. In any case, the Qin empire lasted only a short time. Then, around 202 BC, a new dynasty emerged: the Han. Its first emperor was Liu Bang.”
I stopped and frowned. “What’s wrong, Mum?”
“Well, I really don’t like talking about Chinese history using Western ways of counting years!”
“You mean BC and AD. I don’t like them either!”
“Exactly. What does China have to do with some man, Jesus Christ, being born far away, who meant nothing to Emperor Liu Bang? We have our own way of dating different periods.”
Moon turned to look at me. “What is your Chinese way?”
I thought for a while but found myself fumbling. I couldn’t explain the Chinese calendar simply to an 11-year-old. The Chinese dynastic calendar is based on the name of the emperor followed by the name of the dynasty, along with a number to indicate the year within that dynasty. Each new dynasty starts again from year zero.
“Just give me an example, Mum,” she said, swallowing a piece of watermelon.
“OK. We say ‘Tang Gaozu 12 nian,’ meaning the 12th year of the reign of Emperor Gaozu of the Tang. Or, in your Western equivalent, AD 630.”
As was so often the case, my speech to Moon was a mix of Chinese and English words. I went on, feeling like a schoolmistress. “You know, at the beginning of the Tang, in the early seventh century, Xi’an was one of the world’s largest and most populous cities.”
It is estimated that about 1 million people lived within the city walls. By the dynasty’s end, in the ninth century, the country’s population had grown from 50 million to 80 million.
For a contemporary Chinese person, numbers are essential for measuring things, since we grew up in a populous country and under a governing party obsessed with numbers and numerical record-keeping. The Chinese Communist party would always describe a place with wording such as “the village used to have 38 Communist party members, which has expanded to 380, occupying an area of 32,000 sq metres.” We Chinese children grow up reciting numbers. Moon nodded vaguely. Numbers are difficult for a British kid in this context.
Silent armies
Contemporary Chinese tourism is about rediscovering the country’s wondrous past, often in a banal and highly commercial fashion. History, it seems, can be a place for solace and the temporary forgetting of the stresses of contemporary Chinese life. I keenly felt that “history” was packaged as a touristic spectacle during this trip. Even so, I was confident that our travels would allow me to reassess my relationship to a past which had been entirely denied during the Cultural Revolution. I felt this intensely, and I believed that many in China felt the same way.
Once you are in Xi’an, you cannot avoid passing the site where the terracotta army was buried. The warriors are not from the Tang dynasty, but from the earlier Qin, about 2,200 years ago. After waiting in an enormously long queue outside the Qin tomb site, a great throng of tourists pushed its way into the tomb like a host of locusts. By then we were already exhausted and our water bottles were empty.
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Visitors look at the terracotta warriors exhibition in Xi’an. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Inside the vast hall where the terracottas were displayed, the eager tourists pressed on top of one another – not unlike the statues themselves. Beneath us, on the brown earth, headless figures, broken arms and body parts were neatly laid out. Most of them bore the uniform of a Qin dynasty warrior. They were ethereally still, as though waiting, or listening, but outside of time. I felt that we ourselves had come here to be temporarily buried along with these effigies of imperial power, a living host of terracotta tourists.
These are not the traces of the Tang, though the Qin led to the Tang by way of a great tangled knot of dynastic struggle.
“I”If there had been no Qin dynasty, there would be no Tang,” I said to Moon. “So it’s like if there had been no Greeks, there would be no Romans?” she replied confidently. She knew far more about Greek gods and Roman goddesses than I did. I thought about what the child had said as I looked down at the broken statues. I stated, and she agreed, that ancient Chinese culture was as rich and advanced as ancient Greek culture. But what did that really mean? I tried to breathe more easily. The air inside the hall was musty and thick with dust, while the crowd of tourists pushed us back and forth in a swirl of human activity. At one point, my child and I were desperate to escape the crushing weight of all that history.
The court diary and the sisters
Much like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, or even the Domesday Book from 1,000 years ago, there is the Old Book of Tang, made up of 200 chapters that record events from the Tang era as written by court ministers. The book is hard to understand because it is written in classical Chinese. The difference between the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old Book of Tang is that the former was written by monks in monasteries, while the latter was written by mandarins in the imperial court. Church culture was certainly very different from court culture. The western church was a sanitised place populated only by men, while the palace court was a luxurious and sensual inner city full of cultured courtesans and powerful women. “It was a tradition in those times that the palace diary, or any official record, was kept by the ladies of the palace,” I said to Moon.
We had just arrived at the Huaqing hot springs, 20km from Xi’an, a place where Tang emperors and their wives spent their leisure time. Now it is a major tourist destination. “But I thought women were badly treated back then, and they could not read or write,” Moon said. “Not during the Tang! From the Tang dynasty onwards, women were celebrated for their literary and artistic skills, not just for their beauty.”
Indeed, around the eighth century, there were five famous sisters whose main responsibility was to keep the court diary. The sisters were granddaughters of a well-known poet, Song Zhiwen, and were educated not only in classical poetry but also in politics. All five became accomplished writers and thinkers, and they made a pact never to marry but to devote themselves to literature and art. Together they wrote the Analects for Women, a female counterpart to the Confucian Analects, which became a classic text in women’s education during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In AD788, these sisters were recommended by a local official to Emperor Taizong, a great lover of literature, who personally examined their work and recruited them all into palace service as xueshi – masters of learning. The emperor held them in the highest esteem. It was during the Tang that, for the first time, literate women became important court ministers, called shangshu. “That’s pretty amazing,” Moon said. “You told me that in ninth-century England, there were just Vikings raiding villages, and most people were illiterate.” “That’s right. And if Alfred the Great had not promoted literacy, no one would have been able to read except the monks.”
During the Tang, one area in which women took on an increasingly significant role was as artists, and some courtesans were famed singers and dancers, as well as being known for their extravagant clothing and hairstyles. Before the Tang, women in China were mostly veiled and almost never in public service. The women of the Tang changed that tradition with the support of an enlightened court. They became fashion-makers, inventing elaboratemakeup and wearing extravagant dresses. Would it be too pretentious, too pompous, to call the Tang era one of the earliest feminist eras in ancient history? I thought of Anglo-Saxon women from that time, or the wives of Vikings and Romans. I was not convinced they had achieved such power.
The Grand Canal
In Britain, I have always lived by Regent’s Canal, around east London. After I left China more than two decades ago, my daily routine revolved around that rusty urban English water. I would pass the narrowboats along the winding waterways and often think of the Grand Canal in China. The Grand Canal is the longest and oldest artificial waterway in the world. Its oldest section was built in the fifth century BC. Later, in the seventh century AD, Emperor Yang of Sui undertook an ambitious project to connect the south and north by waterway. Then the Tang emperors expanded it and perfected its use.
I first saw the canal in 1993, when I left my southern hometown and travelled to Beijing to study. The Beijing Film Academy is right next to the canal, by the gate of the old Yuan dynasty ruins, and a park had recently been built along the waterway, with willows lining the banks. After classes, I would leave campus and sit by the water, reading or eating takeaway. The water was motionless. I always wondered how such great quantities of rice and tea had been transported on this water in olden days.
Often, on a cold sunny afternoon after snow had fallen, with one hand holding a translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetry, I would throw little stones onto the frozen surface to see if the ice would break. It was by that canal, dare I say, that I became a young intellectual, however arrogant and pretentious that may sound. I could even say that I was part of the historical landscape, stoic but everlasting, regardless of the destruction of ancient culture in China since the Cultural Revolution. For me, the Tang is the exact opposite of the Cultural Revolution. The former is rich and culturally diverse, while the latter is poor, unimaginative, and functional in every aspect of life and thought.
When we briefly visited Beijing, I wanted to show Moon the canal and the park near the Beijing Film Academy, but I never managed to venture to that part of the capital. Beijing was too big to get around. The six massive ring roads and countless highways surrounding it seemed larger than the orbits in our solar system.
Luoyang
One might complain about the quality of water or air in China, but one can only admire the public transport: roads and railways lead to every possible destination. This is a very recent phenomenon. When I left China some 20 years ago, the infrastructure was very poor. The train from Shanghai to Beijing took two days; today it takes less than five hours.
We were on a high-speed train from Shanxi to Henan province. The landscape was lush and mountainous; the vegetation was emerald green and luminous under the sun after a rainstorm.
We arrived in Luoyang at noon, hoping the day would be cooler than the 39C we had suffered through in Xi’an.
During the Tang dynasty, Luoyang was called Dongdu (東都), the eastern capital. When Wu Zetian became empress, she constructed the tallest palace in Chinese history in Luoyang, of which there is now a duplicate in the old town, to the east of the city.
We stayed in a brand new Hyatt hotel in the new town of Luoyang. So new, in fact, that the hotel lobby was still filled with large bundles of fresh flowers brought in for the opening celebration. From the 16th floor, I gazed down. On my left was the huge campus of the Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology; on my right was the jigsaw-like People’s Park, with sports facilities; on the horizon, skyscrapers stood in a bland, uniform line, like a monoculture forest. Where was the history? I longed for old sights and sounds.
From Luoyang, we visited the nearby Longmen Grottoes, one of the largest Buddhist sites in the world, whichIt has survived for more than 1,500 years. What a magnificent sight—countless statues of Buddha! Their finely carved details were once painted in gold. Now they stand bare and colourless, and most are missing body parts.
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The Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang, Henan province. Photograph: VW Pics/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
“Mum, did you know there are 100,000 statues on these hills?” Moon said, reading a signpost.
“That’s a lot,” I said. “What else does it say?”
“It says there are more than 2,345 caves. Some are barely bigger than small holes, and some are as tall as 17 metres.”
As always, the Chinese obsessively list numbers when describing any historical site, but anyone who visits these grottoes hardly needs them. Like me, they can feel a dizzying sense of disbelief, even with our feet planted firmly on these ancient rocks. Like Stonehenge in England or the Egyptian pyramids, these monuments inspire a feeling of the sublime.
As we walked down toward the riverbank, I looked back at the blurred faces and figures of the Buddhist caves on the hill. How much more history could I absorb in one afternoon? Do we need to see 10,000 Buddha statues to conclude that there is a Buddha? Do we need to erect 20-metre statues of Jesus on the cross to prove he died for us? Why are we so attached to the physical side of spiritual life? Isn’t the sky vast and awe-inspiring enough to contemplate? Emptiness is where the richest possibility lies.
Weary and drowsy, we left the lavish spectacle behind. Flagging down a taxi by the gate, we wanted to get back to the hotel before rush hour, where we would deal with the small, ordinary things of daily life—paying bills, charging phones, ordering a meal, brushing our teeth.
The Qianling Mausoleum and the afterlife
We travelled great distances on high-speed trains. From the northern plains we crossed the Yangtze River and sped down to the south, then headed north again, into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Moon had been tasting all kinds of strangely flavoured food and learning local dialects, and could almost have passed as a native Chinese kid.
At the very end of our trip, to come full circle, I wanted to visit the place where the Tang emperors and empresses were buried, so we returned to Shanxi province and arrived at Qing Xian, 85km north-west of Xi’an.
Here, along the highways, even the ginkgo trees are newly planted—all trimmed, standing straight and of even height, like an obedient army waiting to be called into action. Even though this place was very much part of the royal centre of Chang’an during the Tang dynasty, there is little to see now. Because of its peripheral location, its past has been completely paved over to make way for its new industrial purpose. You can see only a few traces of the old ways of life half-hidden on a street corner: a tiny shoe repair shop, an old tailor’s shop, or a grandmother selling tea-brewed eggs by the roadside. Otherwise, large trucks carrying steel and cement rush through the streets, horns blasting.
Qianling Mausoleum is where some of the most important imperial families of the Tang dynasty are entombed. After a long, stifling ride, the bus finally dropped us in front of a large complex.
The scale of the mausoleum was unlike anything I had ever seen. A labyrinth to confuse anyone. Once we entered, we had to take another bus inside the vast complex, again with crowds of tourists. The bus took you up into the hills to reach the different burial sites. It was like travelling into an ancient settlement, with pavilions, waterways and inner gardens. There was even a busy street full of restaurants inside the Number Four Mausoleum site.
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Tang court ladies in a fresco painting at Lady Li Xianhui’s tomb, the Qianling Mausoleum. Photograph: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
It was difficult to connect the tombWe matched the numbers on the map to the actual sites. There seemed to be many tombs, but few were open to the public. The sound of cicadas faded as the midday heat rose. Under the burning sun, we felt like two roasted ducks. We staggered toward a mausoleum that promised air-conditioning.
We reached two tomb sites, one belonging to a princess and the other to a prince. From the gate, we could see a sloping tunnel stretching into a darkening underground world. Cool but tomb-like air drifted from the entrance and drew us in.
We followed a group of sweating tourists into the narrow tunnel. It was the tomb of Princess Yongtai. She was the seventh daughter of Emperor Zhongzong and the second daughter of his wife, Wei. She died at 15, apparently while giving birth.
“Oh, she died so young!” Moon exclaimed.
Around us were elaborate murals showing palace ladies and officials in an enchanted garden. The colors had faded, and the walls were full of holes and patches. As we went deeper, the air became musty and heavy.
Near the end of the tunnel, we came to a chamber with frescoes, and the mausoleum revealed itself. It was a miniature wooden house with carved windows and inscriptions on the surface. Inside was the actual coffin.
What was life like for Princess Yongtai 1,300 years ago? I could not decipher the obscure inscriptions, but what I had read earlier in the New Book of Tang told a different story of how she died. Since the all-powerful Empress Wu was her mother-in-law, Princess Yongtai did not have an easy life. Animosity persisted between the two women. It was well known that Empress Wu led an unconventional sexual life; even in her old age, royal family members and ministers were familiar with her exploits. As a result, indignation and resentment built up in the court, and when the princess was found to be disloyal, punishment followed immediately. According to the New Book of Tang, it was said that the princess was caned to death, though elsewhere it was recorded that she was forced to kill herself.
We did not visit the next tomb—we wanted to go straight to the most mysterious site, Empress Wu’s tomb. After much inquiry, we learned that it was impossible: no one would be allowed to enter the mausoleum of the emperor and the empress. In fact, we were told, the two main tombs had not even been excavated.
So we wandered over the hills of this sacred place, sucking on ice lollies in the shade of pine trees. We imagined a curious dark world inside the uncovered tombs, barred to modern people. It was time to leave, but still we lingered; we suspected we would never return to this place.
Along the road was a procession of statues, some headless and some armless. We walked past these ancient figures and sometimes stood before them, as if waiting for speech, a command, or a bow. They stood like sturdy sentinels, without acknowledging our presence, their stone minds far beyond the doings of the passing parade of tourists. I thought of John Keats’s “cold pastoral” and felt a shiver and prickling of skin in the heat. Was that a slight puff of wind, or time itself touching our all too fragile bodies?
Adapted from Everyday Tang, published by Notting Hill Editions (£9.99). To support the Guardian, buy your copy at guardianbookshop.com. P&P may apply. Xiaolu Guo is a novelist, memoirist and film-maker. Her most recent novel is Call Me Ishmaelle (Vintage), a retelling of Melville’s Moby-Dick. Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs Why Am I So Fascinated by Chinas Ancient Golden Age
Beginner Questions
What was Chinas ancient golden age
It usually refers to periods like the Tang and Song dynasties when art poetry trade and technology flourished Many people also include the Han dynasty
Why do so many people find this era fascinating
It produced stunning art great poetry bold inventions and cosmopolitan cities It feels both foreign and familiar at the same time
Why did I suddenly get interested in it as an adult
Thats common Adult life often sparks curiosity about meaning beauty and roots A trip with your daughter can turn vague interest into a real passion
What makes the Tang dynasty so special
It was wealthy open to the world and a hub for poetry and trade Changan was one of the largest most international cities on Earth
What about the Song dynasty
The Song excelled in technology commerce and the artsprinting paper money porcelain and landscape painting all thrived
Is it okay that I dont know much history yet
Absolutely Curiosity matters more than expertise You can learn alongside your daughter
Intermediate Questions
Why does sharing this interest with my daughter make it more meaningful
Shared discovery builds connection Youre not just learning factsyoure creating memories and a common language
What are the most famous inventions from this era
Paper printing gunpowder and the compassoften called the Four Great Inventionsplus porcelain paper money and mechanical clocks
Which poets should I start with
Li Bai Du Fu and Wang Wei for the Tang Su Shi for the Song Their work is emotional and accessible in translation
Why does Tang poetry still move people today
It deals with universal themesfriendship exile nature longingin very few words That brevity hits hard
How can I tell which dynasty Im looking at in a museum
Look at the shapes and glazes Tang ceramics are often colorful and bold Song pieces tend to be simple and elegant like celadon
Whats a common mistake people make when studying this era
Romanticizing it It was also a time
