SUI DYNASTY

Pinyin Sui (AD 581618), short-lived Chinese dynasty that unified the country after four centuries of fragmentation in which North and South had gone quite different ways. The Sui also set the stage for and began to set in motion an artistic and cultural renaissance that reached its zenith in the succeeding T'ang dynasty. Its capital was at Ch'ang-an. The first Sui emperor, Yang Chien, known by his posthumous name Wen-ti, was a high official of the Chou dynasty, and, when that reign dissolved in a storm of plots and murders, he managed to seize the throne and take firm control of North China; by the end of the 580s he had won the West and South and ruled over a unified China. He established uniform institutions of government throughout the country and raised a corps of skilled and pragmatic administrators. He reestablished Confucian rituals last used in government by the Han dynasty. He sought and won the support of men of letters, and he fostered Buddhism. He promulgated a penal code and administrative laws that were simpler, fairer, and more lenient than those of the predecessor Chou. He conducted a careful census, a practice long lost in chaos, and simplified the taxation. He made his army into a system of militias that was self-supporting when the country was not at war. The second emperor, Yang Ti, completed the integration of southern China into the empire, emphasized the Confucian classics in an examination system for public employment, and built a second capital at Lo-yang in the east. He engaged in great construction projects, including a vast canal system. The relations of the Sui with the Turks in the west deteriorated; and, when wars in Korea to exact tribute failed, the short regime collapsed in a welter of rebellions. Yang Ti was murdered by a member of his entourage in 617, and his successor, Kung Ti, reigned only a year. The architecture of the Sui was dominated by the great Y-wen K'ai, who in nine months designed a vast capital city at Ch'ang-an that was six times the size of the modern city of Sian at the same site. Its palace had a rotating pavilion accommodating 200 guests. Painters came from all over the country seeking patronage at the Sui court. The dynasty established the course of nurture of the arts that was embraced by the succeeding T'ang dynasty (q.v.). Because of the brevity of the Sui reign and the consonance of its arts with those of the T'ang, the arts of the two dynasties are often treated together.