cont.
As mentioned, poetry was thriving during this era, too. There was Mei Yaochen, the social critic and literary pioneer who invented the artistically controversial New Subjective Style that made waves in Chinese literary culture of the time, and Ci Style was experiencing a major resurgence, underscored by the famous works of poets like Li Qingzhao, Fan Zhongyan, Huang Tingjian, Li Yu, General Xin Qiji, and the massively politically, philosophically, and academically influential Ouyang Xiu, who was one of the voices most responsible for the assimilation of Buddhism into neo-Confucian principles, and the powerful rise of neo-Confucianism that's shaped the country, and by extension the world, ever since.
Alongside the boom in poetry, as well as philosophical and political essays such as Zhu Xi's Synthesis on Confucianism, a collection of writings kept as the official imperial ideology of China all the way to the late 19th century, technical writings were of major significance in the Song era, ushering in a new age of education and thereby equality for the masses. Literacy rates shot up during this period, well beyond Europe's even in later centuries. Numerous extensive, thorough, and nuanced historical works were written, such as Zizhi Tongjian, a 294 volume documentation and assessment of Chinese history from the Warring States period all the way to the Fall of the Tang Dynasty. (Gone With the Wind, eat your heart out.) Song Ci, a physician and judge, published his Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified, a work laying the foundations of forensic science, outlining the advancements and observations of the time, a compendium that's largely considered unmatched in the Western world until the works of Roderic de Castro in the 17th century. Encyclopedias were also published, including The Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau, published in 1013, a million words bound in a thousand volumes of information. Also brilliant polymathic scientist Shen Kuo's Dream Pool Essays of 1088, covering a huge array of subjects from literature, to art, to math, military strategy, astronomy, meteorology, geology, geography, metallurgy, engineering, hydraulics, zoology, botany, architecture, agronomy, anatomy, medicine, anthropology, archaeology, to yo fucking mama. All available to the people. All this while Europe was still scrambling through their own shit rivers (you'd think plumbing would be one of the few things white people wouldn't forget how to do kek) to organize themselves into a coherent, functioning society, 600 years after the death of Daddy Rome.
And all over China the performing arts were booming, seeping into every facet of life in Kaifeng. The city had over fifty theaters, four of them large enough to seat thousands of people at a time. It was during the Song Dynasty that they invented the Xiwan style of theater, and revived the dwindling Zaju style. The people's freedom of speech can be clearly seen in the remaining scripts and reviews of the time indicating that much of their theater was political satire, parodies of concurrent figures of power. (Too bad Galileo couldn't have been born 600 years earlier and in China, where he wouldn't have been arrested. Especially since China was already on his page about some things, having been accurately predicting eclipses over three thousand years before Galileo was born.) Also plays that posed interesting philosophical and moral questions to the common audience, lacking the "good is good, bad is bad, here's the answer" style of western moral art, with hilarious fucking titles such as "The Peony Smells Best With Wine, The Wine Tastes Best When It's Stolen". With the explosion of trade and widespread economic success, open air markets, community activities, and the Song Dynasty invention of restaurants, brought the citizens flooding into the streets more than ever, and through this bustle of culture, the performing arts became widespread beyond precedence, with impromptu jam sessions and acrobatic performances going on on every street corner, and common vendors and merchants developing a tradition of vying for customers with song, dance, fire tricks, and juggling their own wares. It was said that "the city itself was turned into a stage, and the citizens the audience". Possibly above all, was recitation of poetry that developed a new rhythm through the accompaniment of drumming on whatever objects could be found nearby in the markets. Yeah. Ancient Chinese rap battles. These were so popular in Kaifeng that the royal concubines and consorts began a tradition at the New Years Festival (this era was also a great revival of festivals) of holding a poll among the people of which vendors could spit fire, the winners of which would be invited to the palace to throw down, where the ladies of the court would pick their favorites and be like "damn hotbuns, lemme give you some gold for dem dumplings". It was said that at these parties, a simple cook could be paid so handsomely for his rice cakes that he'd become rich overnight. Kaifeng was a bangin' 24/7 party that puts Ibiza to shame.
This is one place. At one time. Don't even get me started on the Tang Dynasty, The Han Dynasty, The Yuan Dynasty, Morenjo Daro, Timbuktu, the Maya Empire, the Inca Empire, the Timurid Renaissance, the Egyptian early Dynastic Period, or god help you, The Islamic Golden Age. Much less the innumerable ways in which periods of European achievement would not have been possible without the advancements of other cultures before them. Or the individuals that leaped ahead of their time, in many cases the credit often given to later Europeans in the history taught in the west, like Zera Yacob, the Ethiopian thinker who's writings on theology and philosophy covered many of the revelations of the Enlightenment era philosophers years before they were born. Or the lasting, worldwide significance of events you've never heard of, like The Battle of Tulis River. Or perhaps I need to detail for you what much of European history looks like when you're not just googling "y white ppl r da best". There's a reason Europeans ubiquitously dubbed one of the greatest thousand-year periods in culture and innovation in the world "The Dark Ages". And as Inq pointed out, you keep narrowing the goal posts on this golden triumph of Eurocentrism, while simultaneously claiming that white people lead all of history. If Europe had truly been at the forefront of culture and innovation for all of recorded human history as you claim, the rest of the world would have had to be grunting in caves for most of it.
You know nothing about history.
"To realize that our knowledge is ignorance,
This is a noble insight
To regard our ignorance as knowledge,
This is mental sickness"
-Lao Tzu
