and palace and army, and for supplementary purchases of grain; two million strings of money (a string nominally held a thousand copper coins) for salaries and for the army.  This was much more than the state budget of the Han period.  The population of the empire had also increased; it seems to have amounted to some fifty millions.  In the capital a large staff of officials had been created to meet all administrative needs.  The capital grew enormously, at times containing two million people.  Great numbers of young members of the gentry streamed into the capital for the examinations held under the Confucian system.

The crowding of people into the capital and the accumulation of resources there promoted a rich cultural life.  We know of many poets of that period whose poems were real masterpieces; and artists whose works were admired centuries later.  These poets and artists were the pioneers of the flourishing culture of the later T’ang period.  Hand in hand with this went luxury and refinement of manners.  For those who retired from the bustle of the capital to work on their estates and to enjoy the society of their friends, there was time to occupy themselves with Taoism and Buddhism, especially meditative Buddhism.  Everyone, of course, was Confucian, as was fitting for a member of the gentry, but Confucianism was so taken for granted that it was not discussed.  It was the basis of morality for the gentry, but held no problems.  It no longer contained anything of interest.

Conditions had been much the same once before, at the court of the Han emperors, but with one great difference:  at that time everything of importance took place in the capital; now, in addition to the actual capital, Ch’ang-an, there was the second capital, Loyang, in no way inferior to the other in importance; and the great towns in the south also played their part as commercial and cultural centres that had developed in the 360 years of division between north and south.  There the local gentry gathered to lead a cultivated life, though not quite in the grand style of the capital.  If an official was transferred to the Yangtze, it no longer amounted to a punishment as in the past; he would not meet only uneducated people, but a society resembling that of the capital.  The institution of governors-general further promoted this decentralization:  the governor-general surrounded himself with a little court of his own, drawn from the local gentry and the local intelligentsia.  This placed the whole edifice of the empire on a much broader foundation, with lasting results.

2 Turkish policy