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5 - Cities and Urban Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2023

Linda Walton
Affiliation:
Portland State University
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Summary

Cities that rose up around trade differed significantly from those built as political and ceremonial centers, as the earliest cities in China were. Cities that grew as centers of trade showcased the expansion of commerce and the maritime connections that helped to fuel the Song economic revolution. Commerce drove urbanization during the Northern Song as both domestic and foreign trade increased dramatically. The population of the Northern Song capital, Kaifeng, grew to around a million, and port cities such as Quanzhou along the southeast coast made room for communities of foreign merchants along with their native residents. Both literary accounts such as Memories of the Eastern Capital and the unique visual representation of city life in Spring Festival along the River richly portray diverse aspects of Song urban life: order and disorder, festivals and entertainment, access to goods and services, food supply and distribution, intermingling of different social classes and genders. The Khitan Liao, Tangut Xi Xia, and Jurchen Jin also established multiple capital cities as they formed centralized states and empires. In part these were modeled on Chinese cities, but archaeological and other evidence has shown that cities often served quite different purposes for nomadic pastoral peoples.

Type
Chapter
Information
Middle Imperial China, 900–1350
A New History
, pp. 120 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Cities and Urban Life
  • Linda Walton, Portland State University
  • Book: Middle Imperial China, 900–1350
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355025.006
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  • Cities and Urban Life
  • Linda Walton, Portland State University
  • Book: Middle Imperial China, 900–1350
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355025.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Cities and Urban Life
  • Linda Walton, Portland State University
  • Book: Middle Imperial China, 900–1350
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108355025.006
Available formats
×