FIVE DYNASTIES

in Chinese history, period of time between the fall of the T'ang dynasty (ad 907) and the founding of the Sung dynasty (960), when five would-be dynasties followed one another in quick succession in North China. The era is also known as the period of the Ten Kingdoms because 10 regimes dominated separate regions of South China during the same period. The first of the five dynasties was the Later Liang, which was established by the rebel leader Chu Wen after he usurped the T'ang throne in 907. Chu was murdered by his own son in 912, and the Later Liang was overthrown by one of its generals, Chuang-tsung, who established the Later T'ang dynasty in 923. Although Chuang-tsung ruled relatively successfully for 13 years, the Later T'ang was finally terminated when one of its generals, Kao-tsu, overthrew his master with the aid of the Khitan, a seminomadic people of inner Asia, and Kao-tsu established the Later Chin dynasty. When Kao-tsu's son attempted to halt his tribute payments to the Khitan in 946, they reinvaded North China and carried him into captivity, thus ending the Later Chin. The following year a former Later Chin general who also bore the name of Kao-tsu founded the Later Han dynasty and pushed the Khitan back into Inner Asia. But this regime lasted only four years before still another general usurped the throne, founding the Later Chou dynasty. Although progress toward a more stable government began to be made during this time, the emperor died, leaving an infant on the throne. As a result, another general, T'ai-tsu, seized the throne, founding the more long-lived Sung dynasty, thus bringing the Five Dynasties period to an end. In spite of the unstable political situation under the five dynasties, cultural activity was not greatly disrupted. It was during this period that printing by wooden blocks was fully developed, and the first complete printing of the Confucian classics was completed in 953. The greatest of the painters in the North was Ching Hao, who was working in monastic seclusion in the mountains of Shansi. Hu Huai was a great figure painter doing hunting scenes in the North. Flower painting, until then distinctively Buddhist, became a branch of nonreligious painting during the Five Dynasties. Although the production of some pottery of the T'ang era was disrupted, the white and black glazed wares of the T'ang were produced in the North without disruption during the Five Dynasties. A form of poetry that had developed during the T'ang was the tz'u, lyrical lines of uneven length written to accompany musical tunes. In the Five Dynasties the tz'u won enormous popularity. Folktales also won favour as a literary genre at this time, and a liberating trend in prose, relaxing many stylistic restrictions, freed writers to produce new forms of fiction such as tales of romance and adventure.