Ep. 304 | The History of Guangzhou (Part 2)
The China History Podcast
Laszlo Montgomery
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're picking up in the Tang Dynasty. Guangzhou continues its leading role as the gateway to Southern China coming from the South China Sea and beyond. Heaven is high and the emperor is far away. Despite its importance to the dynasty even in the 7th century, Guangzhou was still a place of banishment and not yet completely integrated with everything happening in the north. Arab and Persian traders and diplomats were regular visitors to Guangzhou and enjoyed a mini-golden age of cultural and commercial interaction. The Maritime Silk Road was in full bloom and Guangzhou was at the center of it. But all was not business as usual.
Two violent disturbances will hit Guangzhou that shatters the peace. And Guangzhou's misfortune will become Quanzhou's opportunity. In this episode, we'll also look at the Southern Han Dynasty from the Five Dynasties Ten Kingdoms period that followed the fall of the Tang. Liu Yan based his dynasty in Guangzhou and left behind ruins and relics that are still around today. We'll finish off in the Southern Song Dynasty when Guangzhou's economic importance to the country reached an all-time high.
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Transcript
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| 0:54.8 | Welcome back again, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of slow Montgomery here with another |
| 1:04.3 | China History Podcast episode, Guangzhou Part 2 today. |
| 1:10.3 | Last time we got all the ancient history out of the way, like a lot of this material |
| 1:14.0 | from these earliest days, we depend mostly on official court documents and various other |
| 1:20.0 | works, many of which we have to either believe or hold suspect, even in today's world, |
| 1:26.8 | it's sometimes hard to separate truth from fiction. |
| 1:30.3 | So one or two thousand years ago requires a bit of a leap of faith as to the veracity |
| 1:36.3 | of what we read or hear about. |
| 1:39.5 | With respect to Guangzhou's past, to supplement a lot of the most ancient Chinese historical |
| 1:44.7 | documents, there's also quite a bit of written accounts that have come down to us from |
| 1:49.1 | many of the foreign merchants who engaged in the non-high trade, the commerce that was |
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