Brilliant Porcelain of the Song Liao and jin Dynasties
1 min readThe Song dynasty was characterized by its military weakness and cultural pros-perity.
Though under constant threats from neighboring mighty regimes of ethnic mi-norities, it still attached more importance to culture than to military affairs. As a re-sult, it suffered from repeated defeats inwars. Finally, the court was forced to flee southward, and established a reduced regime ruling only the southern half of its original territory.
However, it was duringthis shameful and militarily weak period that unprecedented economic prosperity was achieved, accompanied by rich cul-tural fulfillments, which are best illustrat-ed by jostling crowds and numerousshops in Bianliang city（modern-dayKaifeng）as portrayed in the famous painting of Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival，and the well-developed porce-lain culture.
