The Tang was finally destroyed by ambitious generals who seized control of the armies in the wake of peasant rebellions.  Between 907 and 960, in a period called the ‘five dynasties’, a succession of regional kingdoms – governments established by these generals – prevailed in north and south.

The Buddhist establishment and most other institutions of Chinese life survived the Tang’s decline and the subsequent disunion.

During the tumult after An Lushan’s 755 rebellion and into the Song dynasty, the population center of China shifted decisively to the south.  In 742, 60 percent of China’s sixty million people lived in the wheat and millet producing areas of the Yellow River.  By 980, with a population of nearly one hundred million, 38 percent lived in the north and 62 percent lived in the rice-growing region of the Yangzi Valley.  The proportion of those living in the south continued to increase throughout the Song dynasty and later.

to the history of the Northern Song