Greetings everyone all across the world and five continents. Welcome to the

China History Podcast.

Las Lhasla Montgomery here once again for lack of a better and more entertaining

host. We're covering the time period of 960 to 1127 today,

167 years and all. This was the period of the Northern Song Dynasty. Like the Jo, Han, and Jin dynasties, the Song II is divided into an earlier in a latter period.

The period we will discuss today was known as the Northern Sung and the period we'll look at next time will be the southern sung, which picks up in 1127 after the northern sung are kicked out of their capital in the north.

The Southern Song lasts till 1279 when they and anyone else who got in their way are overwhelmed

by the forces of Kubla Khan and the Mongols.

Today's episode about the northern Song

can't be told without talking about the three other big political entities

in China.

China, as we know it today, was split up into four main centers of power.

You of course still had the Kitan Liao dynasty up in Manchuria in the northeast. Then you had the breakaway Jirchen Jin Dynasty in the north

and the western Shia Dynasty to the west,

which was led by the Tangut people. It made for a very interesting dynamic

and we'll look at these Nan Han dynasties in this episode.

Now in addition to these three main Nan Han dynasties,

the Liao, Jin, and Western Shia, you still

had a lot of empires, kingdoms, and whatnot developing on the periphery of China in

Southeast and Central Asia.

You still had the Tibetans to the West, but there was relative peace with them, and by

the end of the Five Dynasties period, they were not even close to being the menace they

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