On the Cosmopolitan Cultural Character of Kaifeng in Northern Song Dynasty

This paper adopts ethical literary criticism to examine the urban cultural character of Bianjing, namely, the City of Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, and finds that the urban cultural character of the city depends on the ethical identity of its residents. Government armed forces had been garrisoned in Kaifeng since mid-Tang. The garrison in the past dynasties included Xianbei, Shatuo, Sogdian, Turkic people and their descendants. The Northern Song Dynasty had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in its capital Kaifeng. A majority of the imperial court's revenue had been used to raise soldiers, so they enjoyed considerable financial prosperity. Armies are pure consumers, and their spending helped in fueling a boom in consumer and service economy in Kaifeng. These garrisoned troops, ranging from generals to ordinary soldiers, were mostly engaged in business transaction or service labor, thus promoting the development of Kaifeng's commercial economy. Since Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei moved the capital city to Luoyang, the Xianbei ethnic group, especially the nobles, migrated south, and there were many Xianbei people and their descendants making a living in the Central Plains. When it came to the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, warlords during this period such as Li Keyong, Li Cunxu, Shi Jingtang, Liu Zhiyuan, Liu Chong all belonged to the Shatuo race. The royal family of the Song Dynasty has been suspected to be the Shatuo people as well. The Shatuo tribe comprised Sogdians, Turks, Uyghurs and other ethnic groups. Followers of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Judaism etc. also lived in the Bianjing City. There were also Han people, Sogdians, Turks, Uyghurs, Khitans, Jurchens, Koreans, Arabs, Tanguts, Vietnameses, Cambodians, etc. in the capital. Their cultural contact, fusion and integration between various ethnic groups and races shaped the cosmopolitan cultural character of Kaifeng. The commercial activities and traditional customs of Sogdian and their descendants who were gifted businessmen constituted the typical commercial background of Kaifeng City.