Song Dynasty

Chinese History and Culture

Dynasty Assignment

The Song Dynasty

According to me, the most interesting dynasty is that of the Song Dynasty, which took place between 960 and 1279. Although this dynasty can generally be divided into two separate stages: the Northern Song and the Southern Song, to me the entire Song dynasty is very interesting for several important reasons, namely the major changes and innovations it brought to Chinese society and later, to the whole world.

First of all, the Song Dynasty is interesting to me because it is known as being the first government and country in the entire world to have instilled paper bills or banknotes as popular currency. In fact, trade increased enormously during this dynasty and as regular currency was copper and bronze coins, those making large business transactions had difficulties carrying the heavy coins with them. This is very interesting to me because it isn’t the government that firstly initiated this system. I discovered through research that it was in fact China’s largest merchants who began trading paper receipts at stores where they left either their coins or their merchandise, and in 1120 the government officialised the use. I think this shows true ingenuity on their behalf, especially since they were the first ones to think about it. I also think that this shows at which point the Song Dynasty was powerful economically, because people from all around the world came to trade in China, and ended up using these banknotes, even the famous Marco Polo as I discovered, who later brought this system back to Europe.

Furthermore, this is of great interest to me because being a Commerce student, I see now how important currencies are on the business market. It is very important when making large business transactions in international business to make sure that exchange rates are accurate. This being said, the current market reminds me of the Song Dynasty because like the Chinese merchants of the era, new...