Tang And Personages

A serious attempt to recruit an elite corps for the government based not upon birth or wealth, but upon brains and character.
             Xuan Zong succeeded Empress Wu. He organized the capital with roads, gates, curfew for safety, and canal transportation. Emperor Zong was a poet and promoted writing poetry. Tang poems were known to be short, lyric pieces, some long enough to be style narrative poems. Chinese verse is poetry of mood, strongly allusive and about nature. .
             Taxes imposed on individuals by Emperor Zong were three times the amount before. There was a tax on grain, silk or hemp cloth, and floss or fiber. There was a required twenty days corvee for the central government and certain days for the local government. However, in 780, direct taxes were imposed instead of per capita. Tea was used as a beverage in the Tang dynasty, instead of medicinal purposes. As a beverage, huge profits were made by government monopolies.
             South of the Yangzi River became prosperous. Rice paddies were developed. Shoots were grown in nursery plots and planted out in the flooded paddy fields. Famine struck the Tang Dynasty and was the cause of the fall of the dynasty. Disunity followed the period of immense power, great wealth, and sophistication.
             The Silk Road was used during the Tang Dynasty. The time of peace was when travelers of non-Chinese ancestry used the Silk Road. Merchants used the road to sell their goods and trade. Soldiers used the road to raid and conquer towns and villages. Religious citizens used the road to view sacred locations and pray where God was manifested. .
             Chuddha was a Kashmiri monk. He had been practicing medicine for fifteen years in Dunhuang. He lived in the monastery next to the cliff, twelve miles outside of town. He entered the monastery as a child. He didn't receive his full precept of abstinence until his mid-twenties. He did not enter the monasteries as a declaration of faith, but rather as a lifestyle.