Later, after the first Tang emperor, Taoism was removed as the national religion and all religions were treated equal.
This benefitted Buddhism.
In 1987, archeologists discovered an underground temple/palace below the Famen Temple that had been built and sealed during the Tang Dynasty and found a solid-gold pagoda and inside was a finger bone of the founder of Buddhism, Sakyamuni.
The seventeen-hundred year-old Famen Temple was built during the Eastern Han Dynasty. To date, this is the largest underground Buddhist palace/temple in China.
Although China is known as the home of tea, it wasn’t until the Tang Dynasty that drinking tea became part of the culture when the Chinese also invented noodles.
Chang’an, known as Xian when it was the capital of China’s first emperor, had an east and west market that sold goods from around the known world.
A popular past time for both men and women during the dynasty was playing polo, which had been introduced from Persia.
Art, music and dance flourished in the Tang capital. The political flexibility of the Tang Dynasty promoted social tolerance leading to stability.
Continued in Tang Dynasty – Part 4 or return to The Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD) – Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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