Name: Kaifeng
Uploaded: 2018-09-27T16:08:21.000Z
Duration: 4 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

ED GLAESER:  What are the other cities that come to rival in China?

PETER BOL: Well, I think the big change--

and we have wonderful illustrations of this,

because if we look at a map of Chang'an, we can see that grid layout.

The north is this succession of short-lived dynasties.

And then when it's reunified under the Song dynasty at the end of the 10th

century, the Song chooses as its capital not Chang'an.

It chooses a commercial city called Kaifeng on a canal close

We're on the Western part of the North China plane.

And all the illustrations we have of it, and all the discussion and the accounts

of the city that we have from the time describe it as a commercial center,

as a place that's not only an administrative center, but also

And it's at that moment that we start to see the development of let's say

hierarchies of cities taking place where we have a number of cities--

Suzhou, Yangzhou, Hangzhou-- cities in the South

ED GLAESER:  Now there's one piece of infrastructure

that many of these cities have in common,

which is the Grand Canal, which seems to play a role in many of their histories.

PETER BOL: So that Grand Canal that links

the prosperous and fertile southeast with the northern capital

is done under the Sui Dynasty, so back in the end of the sixth century.

Then after a conquest, it's dilapidated, and it has to be restored again.

The Grand Canal, the Yangtze River, the shift

of the center of population to the south,

gradually the shift of the center of commercial wealth to the south

ED GLAESER:  One thing that is somewhat unusual about the Kaifeng story is

that it's quite often in the West that great political cities will

It's less common that you have a city that rises first as a commercial hub,

and then becomes a political city on top of it.

PETER BOL: And remains a commercial city at the same time.

ED GLAESER: So what's different in the way that we look at Kaifeng?

And how do you see the fact that it's originally a commercial city instead

PETER BOL: They can't restore the Tang system of wards, or fang,

They no longer, I think, have the same commitment

to the notion of a unified hierarchy of status, power, wealth, culture,

Kaifeng is still a case where you tend to see elites congregate--

the political leaders, cultural leaders--

ED GLAESER:  In particular neighborhoods, in particular areas?

PETER BOL: No, no. It just congregated there.

But in fact, it's now spread out to other cities as well.

One of the phenomena we see is that when people

retire, when leading officials-- leading cultural figures--

In the Tang, they moved to the capital, the capital corridor in the Song.

They're no longer-- there's no longer the same commitment to the capital

And we actually have really good evidence from 1077.

What that map shows is that the economic hierarchy

and the administrative hierarchy from the capital

all the way down to the county is starting to diverge.

And you have market towns that have more commercial tax coming in

You have county seats that have more commercial tax coming in

So there's no longer this neat Tang hierarchy,

or the imagined hierarchy of Tang where economy

Now we have a world in which commerce is independent of politics,

and where, in fact, the great thing about the Song dynasty is they

So more of its wealth is now coming in, more of its revenue

is now coming in from commerce than from agricultural tax.

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Kaifeng

absolutely

essential

commitment

multiple