Epoch Lives

Epoch Lives · Visual Essay

The Merchant's Scroll

Kaifeng, Song Dynasty, c. 1100 CE

On a spring morning, a silk merchant from Hangzhou passed through the Xinzheng Gate and entered the largest city on earth. He stayed ten days. What he saw was a civilization at its peak — and he had no idea it would not last.

Song Dynasty Kaifeng was the first city in history to reach one million people. It had paper money, moveable type, coke-fired blast furnaces, and night markets open until 1 AM. This essay follows a merchant through ten days of wonder.
20 Diary Entries
5 Acts
10 Days
1M People
Act I · Arrival 1 / 20
Xinzheng Gate Rainbow Bridge · Bian River Eastern Market Night Market Print Quarter · Money Exchange Imperial Way · Clock Tower Imperial Palace Southern Gate

Kaifeng fell to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127.

The imperial court fled south to Hangzhou. The population dropped from over a million to a few hundred thousand.

Zhang Zeduan painted Along the River During Qingming Festival sometime after the fall — a memorial to a city that no longer existed as he had known it.

The printed books survived. The paper money survived. The night markets did not.

"The scroll survived. The city did not."

Sources and further reading

  1. Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During Qingming Festival (清明上河图), c. 1085–1145 — the single most important visual document of Song Kaifeng.
  2. Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (東京夢華錄, "Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital"), c. 1148 — eyewitness memoir of Kaifeng before the fall.
  3. Heng Chye Kiang, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes (1999).
  4. Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800 (2015) — Song economic revolution in context.
  5. Shen Kuo, Dream Pool Essays (夢溪筆談, 1088) — describes Bi Sheng's moveable type and Su Song's clock.
  6. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973) — the Song economic miracle and its limits.
  7. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. IV:2 (1965) — mechanical engineering, including Su Song's clock tower.