Sung Dynasty

Dear Online Journal,
(Sigh) Today is a sad day in China History. It is 1279 and the Mongols just ended the Southern Sung Dynasty, China's Golden Age.  The greatness started in 960 AD, when the great General Zhao Kuangyin reunited China and started the Sung Dynasty.  We purchased a new kind of fast –growing rice which doubled our number of crop seasons!(2) With this surplus in food, China was free to express themselves. Therefore, there was much great advancement made over the past 300 years.  I am a writer and am happy to state that wood blocking for printing become much more popular and therefore made printing easier.  With more available books, more people learned to read and I sold a good number of my books!  Poetry also improved with great poets such as Du Fu and Li-Po. Other culture areas were also visited during this era, like literature and religion.  There were also economic, educational, artistic, and some governmental developments during the past dynasty.  With the invention of paper money, gun powder, and other things such as the mechanical clock, trading boomed!  We were trading with countries such as India, Pakistan, and Arabia.  Manufacturing and commerce also advanced throughout China. The Civil system added more Confucius texts, a great decision, and I hope that China will continue to develop and become a better place. 
~Chung Li     

"Song dynasty." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://ancienthistory.abc-clio.com/>