Once the silk road was opened, it was an enlightenment of new technology, medicinal herbs and spices, along with cultural endeavors. It was fiercely fought over and produced seasoned veterans who would pave the way for Empires.
Officials during the Mongol, Ming, and Qing dynasties all wore Mandarin squares on their robes to indicate social and military rank.
During the occupation of China by Khubilai Khan and his successors in the Mongol dynasty (1280–1368), initiated more primitive patterns of birds or animals on their Mandarin squares.
The Mongol Empire expanded through brutal raids and invasions, but also established routes of trade and technology between East and West.
Mongols on the silk road embraced these new ideas and technologies wisely to increase their empire. Whenever they conquered a city, they divided the people into groups based on their skills.
Doctors, teachers, engineers, and scientists were sent back to Mongol Headquarters to put their knowledge to good use.
During this period:
The Silk Road: At its height these trade routes stretched between Europe, Persia, and China. They connected ideas, materials, and people in new and exciting ways and innovations flourished and compounded.
But it wasn’t easy, the Chinese were forbidden from learning the Mongol script and intermarriage was prohibited.
The same thing happened to those who were good with their hands. Mongols always had a use for blacksmiths, furniture makers, jewelers, and scribes.
Even if you didn’t have a skill, no worries, the Mongols always found a place for you.
You could either join the Mongol army or if you were unfit, for even that type of work the Mongols would drive you in front of their armies, so that your body could fill the moat, making it easier to attack the walls.
The Mongol script was adopted from the Uyghur people of western China, using Arabic as its alphabet. On the steppes, Mongols could pass down their laws through campfire stories but an empire is much too big for that.
Using scribes (sometimes abducted from some unlucky city they had conquered ), the Mongols had books from all over the empire translated into Mongol.
The Mongols also carried new inventions back and forth across Eurasia.
The middle eastern invention of the triangular plow helped to revolutionize agriculture in China, while the Chinese blast furnace made European metal working easier and stronger.
Afghanistan absorbed influences from Europe, as well as India.
Impact of the Pax Mongolica
The Pax Mongolica refers to the relative stabilization of the regions under Mongol control during the height of the empire in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The Mongol rulers maintained peace and relative stability in such varied regions because they did not force subjects to adopt religious or cultural traditions. However, they still enforced a legal code known as the Yassa (Great Law), which stopped feudal disagreements at local levels and made outright disobedience a dubious prospect.
It also ensured that it was easy to create an army in short time and gave the Khans access to the daughters of local leaders.
The end of Mongol rule
The basic dilemma of Mongol rule in China—the Mongols’ inability to achieve a durable identification with Chinese civilian institutions and to modify the military and colonialist character of their rule—became more apparent under Kublai’s successors and reached a maximum under Togon-temür, the last Yuan ruler.
Another ruler Togon-temür was not unfriendly toward Chinese civilization, but this could not alter the contempt of many leading Mongols for Chinese civilian institutions.
For centuries China had known clique factionalism at court, but this was mostly fought with political means; Mongol factionalism usually resorted to military power.
Militarization gradually spread from the Mongol ruling class into Chinese society, and not a few dissatisfied Chinese leaders established regional power based on local soldiery.
The central administration headed by a weak emperor proved incapable of preserving its supremacy.
Thus, the military character of Mongol rule paved the way for the success of Chinese rebels, some of whom came from the upper class, while others were messianic sectarians who found followers among the exploited peasantry.
The Mongol court and the provincial administrations could still rely on a number of faithful officials and soldiers, and so the progress of the rebel movement in the 1350s and ’60s remained slow.
But the rebel armies who had chosen what is now Nanjing, as their base took Dadu in 1368; the Mongol emperor fled, followed by the remnants of his overthrown government.
The Mongols remained a strong potential enemy of China for the next century, however the Genghis Khan clan in Mongolia continued to regard itself as the legitimate ruler of China.
The century of Mongol rule had some undesirable effects on the government of China: imperial absolutism and a certain brutalization of authoritarian rule, inherited from the Yuan, were features of the succeeding Ming government.
Yet, Mongol rule lifted some of the traditional ideological and political constraints on Chinese society.
The Confucian hierarchical order was not rigidly enforced as it had been under the Tang and Song, and the Mongols thereby facilitated the upward mobility of some social classes, such as the merchants, and encouraged extensive growth of popular culture, which had been traditionally downgraded by the literati.
Buddhist Religious Symbols 8 Immortals of Taoism
An ineptitude throne, bureaucratic factionalism at court, rivalries among Mongol generals, and ineffective supervision and coordination of a provincial local administration had gravely weakened the Yuan government by the 1340s.
In 1351, disastrous flooding of the Huang and Huai river basins aroused hundreds of thousands of long-oppressed Chinese peasants into open rebellion in northern Anhui, southern Henan, and northern Hubei provinces.
Rebel movements, capitalizing on the breakdown of Yuan control, spread rapidly and widely, especially throughout central China.
By the mid-1360s, large regional states had been created which openly undermined the Yuan authority. Song in the Huai basin, under the nominal leadership of a mixed Manichaean-Buddhist secret-society had a leader named Han Lin’er. Han in the central Yangtze valley, was led by a onetime fisherman, named Chen Youliang; Xia in Sichuan, the general of the rebel Han was a regime named Ming Yuzhen; and Wu in the rich Yangtze delta area, under a former Grand Canal ( series of waterways in eastern and northern China which links Hangzhou in Zhejiang province with Beijing.) boatman named Zhang Shicheng.
Following a revolution in the 14th century, the Ming dynasty was established.
A onetime salt trader and smuggler named Fang Guozhen had simultaneously established an autonomous coastal satrap in Zhejiang.
While Yuan chieftains contended with one another for dominance at the capital, Dadu (present-day Beijing), in the North China Plain, these rebel states to the south wrangled for survival and supremacy. Out of this turmoil emerged a new native dynasty called Ming (1368–1644).
The new court continued to wear Mandarin squares, this time on the chest and back of their robes.
Later, Han Shantong was arrested and killed by the Yuan army. His son Han inherited his clothes and was honored as the “Xiao Ming Wang” by the uprising army. In 1355, with the support of Liu Futong and others, the leader of the Red Scarf Army, Han Liner was enthroned in the state of Zhangzhou.
The founding name was Song, and the history led by the Han Song regime. Han Liner does not have any leadership ability or military commanding ability.
The reason he was recruited by the Red Turban Army recruited was mainly due to his father’s credit. When Han Shantong launched the uprising in his early years, he claimed to be the 8th grandson of Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty.
In this way, the Red Scarf Army became famous for its role in “expelling the rulers of the Mongolian rule, and recovering the Songhe Mountains.
Mandarins were educated government officials who had to pass difficult examinations to achieve their status. Because they were highly regarded, military officers also wore Mandarin squares on their robes to distinguish rank.
In 1363, another group of uprising forces occupying the Jiangnan area raided Hanlin, who was in Anfeng, and captured him.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Zhu Yuanzhang – although Han Liner is just an emperor, in many only. If this he can be removed by the hands of the enemy, then he will become a true leader, and many of the advisers around Zhu Yuanzhang also hold this view.
However, in Zhu Yuanzhang’s army, there are still many people who admire Han Liner, especially the officers and soldiers at the bottom. This makes rescue operations the only option.
Subsequently, Zhu Yuanzhang led the main attack on Anfeng, and finally successfully rescued Han Liner. This move gave Anfeng higher prestige in the army.
In 1391, new Ming dynasty laws were adopted which standardized the use of Mandarin squares by nobles and public officials.
Throughout the dynasties, these rules were slightly altered by imperial decrees. Though traditionally, the Emperor bestowed the right to wear Mandarin square patterns reserving certain square designs for particular ranks.
In 1644, Peking, the capital of China, was taken over by Li Tzu-ch’eng, a powerful rebel leader.
The Yuan Dynasty was the first dynasty, in which the minority was in power in history. It was the capital of the capital (now Beijing), which lasted 98 years.
Everyone knows that during the Qing Dynasty, there were organizations that had “anti-Qing Fuming” and many loyalists were willing to dedicate themselves to this. A similar situation has occurred in the Yuan Dynasty.
Chinese officials called upon the neighboring Manchu for aid; after toppling the invader, the Manchu seized power and established their own dynasty (called the Qing).
In 1654, the Manchu began to instate clothing regulations among their ranking officials that standardized the adornment of a jacket called a p’u-fu. The p’u-fu contained square plaques with pictures of birds and animals that designated official rank similarly to the Ming system.
The “Son of Heaven” Ming, Qing Emperors considered quasi-divine.
Hundreds of concubines, thousands of eunuch servants Clothing designs, name characters forbidden to rest of population. The kowtow: three bows, nine head-knocks.
The Qing dynasty referred to their Mandarin squares as p’u fang (squares of rank).
The Qing dynasty’s Mandarin squares were more lavish than those of the Ming dynasty. These squares also included new designs, using colored silk threads in both the front and back and sometimes incorporating gold that shone in sunlight.
During the Yung-Cheng period (1723–1735), the pictures on the squares started to look more realistic and natural.
Some squares even sported the Eight Jewels (symbols of wealth such as scroll paintings, ivory tusks, pearls, etc.) in their design.
Near the end of K’ang-hsi reign, the border dimensions of the squares were also reduced in size to fine lines of colored threads and gold.
The Qing dynasty’s Mandarin squares featured natural backgrounds, clouds, flowers, messages, stones, and lucky symbols, each with symbolic significance.
Pines, cypress, evergreen bamboo, and fungus symbolized long life; peonies, riches and honors; roses, eternal youth.
Other nations in Asia also took to using similar symbols to differentiate rank.
During this period, nobles and high officials in Persia and Korea wore bird and animal patterns on their robes, likely due to contact with the Mongol and Ming cultures.
By the 19th century, the design and use of Mandarin squares had begun to change significantly: new symbols were introduced, and some married officials even had Mandarin squares made for the robes of their wives.
Wives’ squares bore the image of a half-sun on one corner and birds or animals facing each half. When the couples sat side by side, the images symmetrically faced one another and completed the image of the sun disk.
Mandarin Square featuring a Wild Goose or Egret
The Qing dynasty’s mandarin square designs continued to change following the succession of new emperors.
