3 Cultural situation; reasons for the collapse

The Southern Sung period was again one of flourishing culture.  The imperial court was entirely in the power of the greater gentry; several times the emperors, who personally do not deserve individual mention, were compelled to abdicate.  They then lived on with a court of their own, devoting themselves to pleasure in much the same way as the “reigning” emperor.  Round them was a countless swarm of poets and artists.  Never was there a time so rich in poets, though hardly one of them was in any way outstanding.  The poets, unlike those of earlier times, belonged to the lesser gentry who were suffering from the prevailing inflation.  Salaries bore no relation to prices.  Food was not dear, but the things which a man of the upper class ought to have were far out of reach:  a big house cost 2,000 strings of cash, a concubine 800 strings.  Thus the lesser gentry and the intelligentsia all lived on their patrons among the greater gentry—­with the result that they were entirely shut out of politics.  This explains why the literature of the time is so unpolitical, and also why scarcely any philosophical works appeared.  The writers took refuge more and more in romanticism and flight from realities.

The greater gentry, on the other hand, led a very elegant life, building themselves magnificent palaces in the capital.  They also speculated in every direction.  They speculated in land, in money, and above all in the paper money that was coming more and more into use.  In 1166 the paper circulation exceeded the value of 10,000,000 strings!

It seems that after 1127 a good number of farmers had left Honan and the Yellow River plains when the Juchen conquered these places and showed little interest in fostering agriculture; more left the border areas of Southern Sung because of permanent war threat.  Many of these lived miserably as tenants on the farms of the gentry between Nanking and Hangchow.  Others migrated farther to the south, across Kiangsi into southern Fukien.  These migrants seem to have been the ancestors of the Hakka which in the following centuries continued their migration towards the south and who from the nineteenth century on were most strongly concentrated in Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces as free farmers on hill slopes or as tenants of local landowners in the plains.

The influx of migrants and the increase of tenants and their poverty seriously threatened the state and cut down its defensive strength more and more.

At this stage, Chia Ssu-tao drafted a reform law.  Chia had come to the court through his sister becoming the emperor’s concubine, but he himself belonged to the lesser gentry.  His proposal was that state funds should be applied to the purchase of land in the possession of the greater gentry over and above a fixed maximum.  Peasants were to be settled on this land, and its yield was to belong to the state, which would be able to use it to meet military expenditure.