Preface
I have long wanted to write a chronological history of China. After much deliberation, I finally decided to write a history of the Song Dynasty. Since the small court of the Southern Song Dynasty was only a separatist regime, I cut the history of the Song Dynasty in half and wrote only the history of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Why should we write about the Northern Song Dynasty instead of the unified Han and Tang Dynasties or the Ming and Qing Dynasties? There are five reasons: first, the Northern Song Dynasty purified the palace, and there was no harm from women's monopoly; second, the suppression of eunuchs' rights, there was no harm from eunuchs; third, the clans were harmonious, and there was no killing among royal families; fourth, it was to guard against in-laws, and there was no example of exclusive power by foreign relatives; fifth, there was no threat from the enlargement of the vassal town and the neglect of the central government.
In addition to the above five points, the Northern Song Dynasty was also the last dynasty of the Sui, Tang, and Song Dynasties, the so-called "Second Empire" classified by historians. I also believe that the Song Dynasty was also the last Han dynasty. "After Yashan, there are no more Han people." Since the Southern Song Dynasty when hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians followed the prime minister and the last emperor to cross the sea to die in Yashan, the Mongols invaded and the Yuan Dynasty was established. This only foreign regime that had not been Sinicized implemented extreme ethnic policies, and there were no real Han people in China. The history of the Yuan Dynasty can only be regarded as the history of the world. The history of China was intertwined with the history of the world at that time. And Zhao Kuangyin was the most legendary emperor of this dynasty. . .