Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China: The Impact o ...

the Grand Canal and its network of tributary canals and estuaries also ensured a more reliable water supply, an improvement that contributed to an increase in cultivated acreage.¹⁴ The subsequent redrawing of territorial and administrative boundaries to form the Jiangnan Circuit (Jiangnandao) in 627 and the Western Zhejiang Circuit (Zhejiang xidao) in 758 suggests that by the mid-Tang period, at least, the region had become important enough to warrant specialized administrative attention. From the Tang era onward, furthermore, references to the prosperity of the Zhejiang region began to appear, along with observations of a fertile natural environment and an active commercial trade involving at least a quarter of Hangzhou’s population.¹⁵

The second wave of mass migration from the north was triggered by the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) which destabilized the Tang dynasty and led to a series of disorders in northern China that continued for the next two centuries.¹⁶ This period saw a major “southeastward flow” of refugees and migrants who crossed the Yangzi and moved into southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and southern Anhui.¹⁷ Although the heaviest concentration of migrants centered on the cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou, an “appreciable density of resettlement … stretching downwards to the shores of Hangzhou Bay and westwards into southern Anhui” was also observed, thus suggesting an increase in population density in the region during this period.¹⁸

One of the most significant policy changes to be adopted by the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127)—one that was to have a great impact on the southern provinces, especially Jiangsu and Zhejiang—was the institution of the nationwide civil service examinations as a means of recruiting talented men into the imperial bureaucracy. This policy change engendered a national school system that, in order to supply qualified candidates for the examinations, promoted a standardized Confucian curriculum. This, in turn, fostered the rise of a shared literati culture and the widespread perception of a classical education as the measure of individual moral and social worth.¹⁹ The southern literati, sheltered from the chaos of war in the north during this period and bolstered by their wealth of resources, were thus able to make their mark in the imperial examinations; they