Collection of Ancient Chinese Cultural Relics, Volume 5

This book, a collection of ancient cultural relics from the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties, 581 to 960, covers calligraphy, jade and bronze ware, gold and silver ware, pottery, porcelain, painting, calligraphy, stone carving and handicrafts.

In 589, the Chen Dynasty which governed the areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River was destroyed by what became the Sui Dynasty, finally putting an end to a history of separate states covering 300 years from the late Eastern Han Dynasty and re-establishing national unification and order. The year 618 saw its replacement by the Tang Dynasty that has gone down in history as a time of grander political and military achievements. During the mid and late period political storms repeatedly occurred. The military governors, eunuchs and different cliques brought about one disaster after another, finally resulting in its collapse and giving rise to the independent regimes of the Five Dynasties and Ten States.

The united Sui and Tang Dynasties developed and improved various state systems in the fields of politics, economy, law, military affairs, education and ethics, ensuring that the economy flourished. In particular, the economy in the areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River gained rapid progress and the development level of agriculture, the handicraft industry and commerce in these areas was unprecedented.

The Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties were times of great elegance and beauty. Various minds of arts and craft. including jade articles, tri-coloured glazed pottery. porcelain. painting calligraphy, stone carving and sculpture achieved peaks in their respective development history, which was really a great wonder.

This book, the fifth in a ten-volume collection, brings to the English-speaking world a series of books from China which has been complied by an Expert Committee of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics. There are 379 descriptions.