干脆来抄书算了

Chapter4: Buddhism, Aristocracy, and Alien rulers.

The age of division 200-589

The centuries that separated the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 and the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in 589 were marked by political division and governments unable to gain firm control of their territories. After several decades of rivalry among three contenders (the three kingdoms,220-265), China was briefly reunified by the Western Jin (265-316). After the Jin fell into internal squabbling(squabble), non-Chinese tribes entered the fray, and China entered a prolonged period when the north was controlled by alien rulers and the south by a transplanted court of emigre aristocrats. The weak government of this period rarely tried to curb tendencies towards social inequality, and during these centuries aristocracy developed at the top of society and personal bondage expanded at the bottom. Confidence in the Confucian view of the social and political order declined and people in all walks of life found hope in religious promising salvation and transcendence, not only Daoist cults but also newly introduced Buddhist religion, which vastly expanded China's intellectual and religious imagination.

The three Kingdoms and Jin dynasty

During the period between the Han and Tang dynasties, short-lived courts were the norm, and even these courts never had the degree of control over society that the Han or Tang did at their heights. Tendencies of Chinese social organization and culture that strong government usually curbed were able to develop with relative freedom - for better and for worse.

The political history of these three-and-a-half centuries is one of the most complex in Chinese history. It began when the generals assigned by the Han government to put down the rebellion of the Yellow Turbans became stronger than the throne and fought among themselves for supremacy. By 205 the poet-general Cao Cao had made himself dictator of the north China. Instead of trying to curb the growth of hard-to-tax local magnates, Cao Cao developed alternative ways to supply his armies. He carved out huge state farms from land laid waste by war and settled landless poor and captured rebel s to work them and thus made the state the greatest of all landlords. He also established military colonies for hereditary military households whose men would both farm and fight. For his cavalry, Cao Cao recruited Xiongnu tribesmen in large in numbers, settling many in southern Shanxi. After his death in 220, his son Cao Pei formalized the family's dominance by forcing the abdication of the last Han emperor and founding the Wei dynasty at the old Han capital of Luoyang.