Tang Dynasty

In agriculture, first of all, the agricultural tools, the trundle cart and the curved shaft plow, especially the trundle cart, pioneered the first use of natural force for irrigation. Secondly, the land resources in the south of the Yangtze River were further developed. Many barren hills have been opened up into fertile farmland. It is very common to set fire to the mountains and to reclaim land from lakes. Of course, the environmental problems caused by this have become more serious. The contradiction between man and land has begun to intensify. Furthermore, water conservancy projects have developed rapidly. Many places in Jiangnan have irrigation areas. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal has further developed. The expansion of water conservancy and irrigation has led to the rapid development of agriculture and further development

As for the handicraft industry, there are many industries

1. The production areas are widely distributed

① Silk and linen fabrics are distributed all over the country;

② Porcelain kilns are distributed in many areas of the Central Plains and Jiangnan;

③ The iron production areas are all over the country. More than a hundred places.

2. Expanded production scale and high output

① China was able to manufacture the largest sea-going ships in the world at that time, and was known as the "King of the Sea".

② In the early Tang Dynasty, 500 sea-going ships were built in Hongzhou alone.

3. Fine division of labor and many varieties

① There are more than ten categories of silk fabrics such as damask and brocade, and each category is divided into many varieties.

② Tang Sancai in the ceramic industry paved the way for the production of colored porcelain in later generations.

③ Celadon in the Tang Dynasty was mainly produced in the south, with the secret-color porcelain from the Yue kiln being the most valuable. White porcelain was mainly produced in the north, with Xing Kiln being the most popular. At that time, there was a saying of "Southern Qing and North White".

④ In 1987, more than ten pieces of secret porcelain were unearthed from the underground palace of Famen Temple in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province, correcting the traditional view that secret porcelain was produced in the Five Dynasties.

4. The level of craftsmanship is high and foreign styles are incorporated

① The smelting and casting industry has generally adopted cutting, polishing, welding and other processes.

② The shipbuilding industry can build warships using propellers. This is the earliest prototype of a ship using mechanical power.

③ Silk fabrics still have bright colors and novel patterns, and some have absorbed Persian styles and techniques

Song Dynasty

Invented the compass and sealed cabin 1 The economically developed Song Dynasty Rich

This has long been a historical conclusion. Other dynasties "suppressed business", but the Song Dynasty was the only exception. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Taizu Zhao Jianyin said, "accumulate a lot of money. Market the land and houses to leave children and grandchildren, and sell singing children and dancing girls to enjoy their lives" in order to enrich the people. Later, Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty also praised it as "making the two systems deliberation rich in the art of government". When Shenzong was in power, he "put financial management first" and asked people to "manage finance first before political affairs." This idea of ??attaching importance to economics has been throughout the Song Dynasty. This is a very important prerequisite for ensuring economic development. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, officials studied how to manage money and seek wealth. The Song Dynasty adjusted the traditional practice of placing emphasis on criminal law and underestimating civil law in the legislation of previous dynasties, and specially studied and implemented monopoly laws, such as the Salt Law, the Liquor Law, the Tea Law and other laws. The Song Dynasty became one of the most active periods of economic legislation in ancient China. Moreover, the economic laws and regulations of the Song Dynasty unified the distribution of interests between the state and economic actors and complied with the laws of the commodity economy. They were very scientific laws and regulations. These correct policy orientations led to a prosperous commerce, rapid development of commerce, and rapid development of handicraft industry. The Song Dynasty established the world's earliest banknote (Jiaozi) bank, which is unique! Even banks can lend money and make payments in other places, even from modern times. It seems that they are all very advanced economic management systems. In terms of geography, the development in the Song Dynasty was not limited to the old areas such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan. Even the social economy and culture in mountainous areas and minority areas had greater development than in the Tang Dynasty. This is also surprising. From the perspective of handicrafts, mining, tea and salt, shipbuilding, papermaking, sugar making, textiles, porcelain making, etc. were much more advanced than those in the Tang Dynasty. In addition to the expansion of production areas and increase in output, the handicraft industry in Song Dynasty also improved its technology significantly.

For example, the production technology of "Tangbing" (rock sugar), the digging of "single wells", the sophistication of Song porcelain, etc. all reflect the maturity and innovation of technology. The rise of commerce and handicrafts has liberated a large number of farmers who were captives of the land. , allowing them to invest in commerce. In the handicraft industry, gold, silver, copper, iron, coal and other mineral deposits had begun to be mined in large quantities during the Northern Song Dynasty. Moreover, the earliest manufacturing factories and processing plants in the world's history also appeared across the country. Such as: shipyards, paper mills, printing factories, weaving factories, firearms factories, and official kilns in various places, etc. It can be seen that the prosperity of the handicraft industry at that time was unprecedented! As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, China had learned how to employ hundreds of full-time industrial workers through coal-burning, steel-making, and large-scale handicraft industries. The government's two military industries employ 8,000 workers - this is already a heavy industry scale! Taking 1078 as an example, the steel industry in North China had an annual output of 1.25 million tons, while the United Kingdom's annual output in 1788, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, was only 76,000 tons. In addition, mining and metallurgy, papermaking, porcelain making, silk weaving, and navigation are also highly developed. The Song Dynasty was worthy of being the home of "high technology" before modern times in the world. It was the overlord of the world's handicraft industry at that time! From a commercial perspective, cities in the Tang Dynasty tended to be administrative centers, while towns in the Song Dynasty tended to be industrial and commercial. Trade areas in cities in the Tang Dynasty were strictly controlled by officials, while those in the Song Dynasty were more liberal. , due to the further development of the commodity economy, the development of cities, the breakthrough of the "fang system", and the rise of market towns, the boundaries between residential areas and commercial areas gradually disappeared. Some of these "new" cities in the Song Dynasty developed to a very large scale. For example, Kaifeng and Hangzhou both reached a population of one million, and the latter was the "unprecedented" city that "Marco Polo" saw in the early Yuan Dynasty. Even though By the late Yuan Dynasty, the largest city outside China was "Baghdad" with a population of only between 300 and 500,000. Hundreds of years later, the Arab traveler Ibn. Beituta also called Hangzhou "the largest city in the world"! The number of people engaged in industry and commerce has gradually increased, output has increased, and investment capital has expanded significantly. Therefore, it is not just agriculture that constitutes the main body of national fiscal revenue. Industry and commerce account for a large proportion. It has surpassed agriculture, and copperplate advertising has appeared in its commercial operations, which is more than three hundred years earlier than Western capitalist advertising. As for the scholar Su Dongpo, he once wrote an advertising poem for an old woman who made oil and vegetables to make her prosperous. What’s more interesting is that the Song Dynasty also saw the emergence of “tabloids” that were similar to modern newspapers and the earliest trademark in history. The trademark was Xiaoke, which was of great significance, marking the gradual improvement of the commercialization system of the Song Dynasty. In addition, the famous scholar Shen Kuo's "Theory of Money Circulation Velocity" also reached the level of modern monetary theory. The strong commercial wave of the Song Dynasty was also the mother body of the earliest capitalism in the world, and the rapid economic development of the Song Dynasty created unprecedented Wealth and prosperity.

Agricultural development is reflected in

1. The progress of rice planting technology. Rice planting area expanded and yield increased

2 Improvement of production tools and innovation of production technology. Characterized by the improvement of production tools such as curved shaft plows and bobbin carts

3 Large-scale construction of water conservancy projects. A series of irrigation canals were dug in the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins, and old canals and river weirs were built.

4 Cut open a lot of wasteland. Working people created a lot of wealth, and the Tang government levied a large amount of grain and cloth from farmers every year. The population increased greatly, and the number of households during Xuanzong's reign was nearly three times that of Tang Taizong's.