sale, as the capital was also a great and long-established
trading centre with a rich merchant class. Thus in the capital there was
every conceivable luxury and every refinement of civilization. The
people of the gentry class, who were maintained in the capital by
relatives serving in the provinces as governors or senior officers,
themselves held offices at court, though these gave them little to do.
They had time at their disposal, and made use of it--in much worse
intrigues than ever before, but also in music and poetry and in the
social life of the harems. There is no question at all that the highest
refinement of the civilization of the Far East between the fourth and
the sixth century was to be found in South China, but the accompaniments
of this over-refinement were terrible.

We cannot enter into all the intrigues recorded at this time. The
details are, indeed, historically unimportant. They were concerned only
with the affairs of the court and its entourage. Not a single ruler of
the Eastern Chin dynasty possessed personal or political qualities of
any importance. The rulers' power was extremely limited because, with
the exception of the founder of the state, Yuean Ti, who had come rather
earlier, they belonged to the group of the new immigrants, and so had no
firm footing and were therefore caught at once in the net of the newly
re-grouping gentry class.

The emperor Yuean Ti lived to see the first great rising. This rising
(under Wang Tun) started in the region of the present Hankow, a region
that today is one of the most important in China; it was already a
centre of special activity. To it lead all the trade routes from the
western provinces of Szechwan and Kweichow and from the central
provinces of Hupei, Hunan, and Kiangsi. Normally the traffic from those
provinces comes down the Yangtze, and thus in practice this region is
united with that of the lower Yangtze, the environment of Nanking, so
that Hankow might just as well have been the capital as Nanking. For
this reason, in the period with which we are now concerned the region of
the present Hankow was several times the place of origin of great
risings whose aim was to gain control of the whole of the southern
empire.

Wang Tun had grown rich and powerful in this region; he also had near
relatives at the imperial court; so he was able to march against the
capital. The emperor in his weakness was ready to abdicate but died
before that stage was reache