Business at the Sea

Middle Year of the Southern Song Dynasty- Over the last couple weeks, the idea of trading at the sea has been fully developed and has been taking action toward sailing at the sea and starting to trade for the dynasty's first time.

As the long, trading business starts, the professional boat makers, who have ideas of improving the ships for long overseas trade days, have thought of a wonderful, effective ship that they just finished designing and took it for a ride at the sea. The ship passed the new standards of the worlds greatest ship ever built and is now being used at the seas.

The ship was following the Silk road using a newest tool for navigation, the compass which has many major shipping ports such as the cities of Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Fuzhou. Traveling to these cities brought big impact to the Southern Song people. The fellow workers traded the dynasty's common inventions for products that can not be found in Southern Song. The products that they traded are tea, silk, lacquerware, porcelain, and books. From trading these products their benefits were black rare woods, precious metals, gems, spices, and ivory.

With the help of trading and overseas business, the government has chosen to lower the land tax. In fact, the invention of paper money and checks has started to become common and very useful both in locale markets and overseas. As a result, the new trade products have made a persons daily life much easier due to overseas trading.

Once she say " I do"

The new age has come to wed your child. 12 years or older is the required age. Marriage in the Southern song are extremely complicated. The father of the groom must go out and seek a bride for his young son. The father meets with the father of a young bride that he finds suitable for his young son, and together the arrange a marriage for their children.

Brides are not allowed to see their future husbands until the wedding day. The family of the bride brings as dowry to the family of her husband, usually gold and jade, and fine things.

Living all contented with each other or depressed does not mean the wife could get remarried after the death of her husband. Once she says "I do," she is now part of her husbands family, bound by the same obligations as her husband was. She is forbidden to marry again due to her husbands death.

Every father wanted a son for many reasons. Of course they want a son for their family name to continue from generation to generation but they also want a son to enhance the family by bringing wives and more children to their homes. Daughters on the other side, are very difficult to raise. They are very expensive, when it comes to beauty and other girl needs. Therefore, many parents don't pay attention to their daughters thinking they will soon move out of their homes.

The New Art

Emperor Heizong of Southern Song Dynasty, has established a creative idea of beautiful painting. Many new ideas are bing created and into models, that hundreds of years later this dynasty and time period would be the "Golden Age" of the Southern Song Dynasty or perhaps China.

The newly idea of Landscape Painting focuses on the quality of beauty. Images evoke poetic ideas, that capture the fleeting qualities of a particular moment. In contrast, the structure of the painting would look more softer, more lyrical, and serene.

Most artists that have started drawing landscape art have been using beautiful nature characteristics to make their art look more conferable and serene. They like to use space around what they draw, for example drawing themselves, now big, NOT small replicas that they look like in reality. Shifting gears, most common feature that make their paintings appealing is the use of nature and what nature gives them such as, the use of birds, bamboo trees, horses, the Yangzi River, mountains, private gardens, temples and so on. The most important thing that makes their art look beautiful is the eternal substances, emotions the character gives you by their face expression, aspiration and lastly, the being creative. Using brush strokes of pink, adds the painting its best look and inspires you when you look at the final piece.

Congratulations to Ma Yuan and Xia Gui for their first masterpieces. They have been working hard and their Landscape paintings will be at soon to come gallery.

Southern Song follows China's New Footbinding Method.

11th century,

Southern Song Dynasty of china has declared that footbinding will become a common practice if you can afford the fee. It has been said that footbinding would make a women's appearance more proper and dainty as if they will need it in the future. With all the painful process women will go through would be a torture but, at the same time make them look wanted by wealthy men.

Being able to afford footbinding is awfully expensive. The wealthy families are trying the method but are hurting their daughters and waisting their beautiful, natural feet just to look more appealing in the future that will be ignored for the next half of their life. Having a daughter with bound feet will put the family name to honor and respect because of it's significant of prestige, beauty and wealth.

Footbinding is known that when a young girl turns at the age of six and younger will begin their afflictive process of footbinding. This awful process will last at least two years until the child has the ability to walk normal without pain in her toes. That would be difficult to be unable to walk normally for at least two years.

The process of footbinding is, a mother would wrap her daughters feet very tightly in long bands of wet cloth, bending the toes and forcing the created arch into a high curve. When the child's foot will stop hurting then the bandages will be unwrapped and tightened. This caused the child's foot to stop growing and make it look pretty for future purposes. With the new feet, girls will be able to wear nice, silked shoes with their small feet.

In conclusion, footbinding has many good sides to it but it also has its bad sides too. Although it makes young girls look nicer in the future, some argue that it will ruin their feet and would be complicated to walk on them with all the pain. "It would be better to not let mothers footbind children's feet because it is mother nature that has created feet to look flat and curved at the top." You can always find a different way of showing you are from a wealthy family.