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• Background
• Visual Guide to the City of Cathay
• Vocabulary
• Discussion Questions

A City of Cathay: View Chinese Life through a Famous Painting (CD-ROM)

Background

The Song dynasty (960-1279) has been called the time of China's "ripe maturity."  Although under constant external threat - its northern region was overrun in 1126-27 by the Jurchen, its southern section in 1276-77 by the Mongols- the Song has long been considered China's most glorious era.  Briefly reunited under Chinese rule, China in the twelfth century was a thriving, commercial, culturally sophisticated civilization.  In the cultural sphere its glories have never been matched; the standard of living was high for many and a new well-to-do class had greater leisure and wealth to be used on entertainment and life's pleasures.  This comfortable style of life spread in the rapidly growing urban areas (by 1100, at least five cities had populations of over a million).  Printing was invented and likewise spread widely.  There was much external trade and flourishing domestic markets.   More of the population was educated than ever before, especially in urban areas, and great works of history, natural science, politics, and philosophy were written.   Chinese civilization of the eleventh and twelfth centuries probably outdistanced that of the rest of the world.

Kaifeng was the imperial capital of China in the first period of the Song dynasty (960-1126), before the north was conquered by the Tang and the court fled to Nanjing and Hangzhou in the south.  Kaifeng was a glorious city.  As one Song author described it, its main thoroughfare, the Imperial Way, measured 300 yards wide (Marco Polo marveled at even the 60-yard-wide avenue of Hangzhou).  In Kaifeng, "two narrow canals ran alongside arcades. They had lotuses planted in them and were bordered by flowering trees - plum, peach, pear, and apricot, so that in spring one had the impression of a brilliantly colored embroidery."  Embroidery is certainly an apt description for the impression given by a famous Song scroll, "Qing (Ching) Ming Festival on the River," which conveys in minute detail the town and its environs, as well as the feelings of joy and well-being of a people on holiday.

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Visual Guide to City of Cathay

Note the following while using the CD-Rom:

Scroll history

• eighteen century copy of a famous scroll
• size
• over 4,000 figures portrayed

Approach to the city

• wedding procession
• outdoor opera
• travelers, especially those in sedan chairs
• boats being pulled upriver
• other activities, e.g., man with monkey
• junks unloading produce, perhaps soybeans or silk
• spectators at sports competition

Kaifeng proper (eastern part)

• thick walls, water and land gates, inspection station
• special home for scholar scoring highest on examination
• people returning from spring grave-sweeping festival (honoring ancestors)
• various stalls, including weaving, dying, drugstore, wine, art
• glimpses of people indoors
• animals used as beasts of burden (camel, ox, donkey, horse)
• human power

Kaifeng (western part)

• type of residences with walled compounds
• stalls and stands

Forbidden City (Imperial Palace)

• promenades and parks
• contrast with other part of city (no throngs, beautiful scenery, pavilions and lakes)

Lesson Recommendation:

This unit would best be used in conjunction with the workbook unit "Marco Polo in China."

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Vocabulary

• scroll
• Chinese opera
• Silk Route
• elixirs and potions
• eunuchs
• Forbidden City
• Song dynasty
• sedan chair
• junk
• soothsayer
• civil service examination
• promenades and pavilions
• Kaifeng

Discussion Questions

1. List all the varieties of travel you observed in the CD-Rom.  Which social classes used each form of travel?
2. What does the CD-Rom suggest about China's place in the world at the time? Was China trading with the rest of the world? Was there much internal trade?
3. Why is Kaifeng called the "center of the center"?
4. List various kinds of stalls and shops. What does this tell you about people's incomes? About manufacture and artists' production?
5. Contrast the eastern part of the city with the residential west.
6. Contrast the western part of the city with the emperor's residence.
7. Compare this scroll with a photograph.  What does the painter not include? For example, what aspects of the "seamy side" of life do you see?
8. When speaking of the river, the narrator suggests that the "reality is all the same, it is one's viewpoint that makes the difference."  How would various social groups see aspects of the city - stalls, river, bridge, entertainment, festivals, Forbidden City - differently?