Why Does the Tang-Song Interregnum Matter? Part Two: The Social and Cultural Initiatives of the South

In Volume 46 of the Journal of Song Yuan-Studies, I published an initial essay on the importance of the southern kingdoms through the Tang-Song interregnum. This century-long period was bracketed by Huang Chao's 黃 巢 rampage through the south that began in 878 and the 978 submission to Song authority of the last autonomous regions: the WuYue 吳越 kingdom of Liangzhe and the QuanZhang 泉漳 satrapy of southern Fujian. I argued that through the interregnum when the holistic empire had dissolved, the south experienced significant economic growth that set the stage for a transformation of its relationship to the broader empire of the reconsolidated Song.¹ But the interregnum was important for more than the consolidation of the southern economies. This was also an era of social and cultural transformation across the south. Much as the economic transformation redefined the relationship between the south and the empire, so innovations in society and culture set the stage for the dramatic changes of the Song and the later imperial period. The goal of this essay, therefore, is to summarize those social and cultural innovations in order to demonstrate that premise.

I first need to clarify the goals and parameters of my discussion. As I noted in my introduction to the previous essay, in a pattern that began with the History of the Five Dynasties (Wudai shi 五代史, later known as the "Old" History [Jiu Wudai shi 舊五代史]) by Xue Juzheng 薛居正 (912–981) and has continued through much of even the most recent scholarship on the Tang-Song transition, "the southern kingdoms have been among the least appreciated and least studied eras in the long history of East Asia." It is this marginalization and consequent neglect of the south that prompts these essays. Here my goal is to demonstrate the importance of the southern kingdoms to the innovations in society and culture that are so often identified with the Song itself.

It is equally important, however, to admit to what neither this essay nor the preceding one intend to do. First, "the south" is a very broad term. From the full reach of the Yangtze basin to the deepest south, the southern kingdoms embraced markedly varied cultures and traditions. Far western Sichuan, home to the successive Former and Later Shu kingdoms, had little in common with Guangnan 廣南, site of the Guangnan (or "southern") Han 漢 kingdom, just as the latter was far removed from events, traditions, and culture of Liangzhe, where the WuYue court was located.² Although all southern kingdoms had to form some degree of relationship with the successive courts of the Yellow River basin, the acknowledged heart of sinitic culture, they all to some degree shared, and all were bound together by, a degree of economic partnership that was defined by the Yangtze River and its southern tributaries, through which even Guangnan Han was integrated via its continued role as the primary entrepôt of the South Seas trade. Still, it is untenable to suggest there was a single, or even generally shared, "southern experience" through the interregnum. For multiple reasons, both historiographical and personal, the bulk of the following discussion will focus on WuYue and Min 閩, the kingdom of Fujian, with digressions when useful to the successive Jiangnan 江南 kingdoms of Wu 吳 and Tang 唐, and occasionally to even broader reaches. While my focus, therefore, is not "the south" in its entirety, my point that there were important social and cultural innovations either consolidating or emerging in the south remains viable.

Second, although I define my discussion in terms of the interregnum, this is not intended to argue that only the interregnum century mattered. The southern kingdoms emerged out of the Tang and flowed into the Song. I would question if there is any historical period that can be isolated from what came before or after, and I certainly would not make that argument for the period in question. It will be readily apparent in the following discussion that the themes I am discussing had roots in the decades, even centuries, before the interregnum century and continued to develop...