history
"Modern Times" in order to indicate that from _c_. 860 on changes in
China's social structure came about which set this epoch off from the
earlier thousand years which we called "The Middle Ages". Any division
into periods is arbitrary as changes do not happen from one year to the
next. The first beginnings of the changes which lead to the "Modern
Times" actually can be seen from the end of An Lu-shan's rebellion on,
from _c_. A.D. 780 on, and the transformation was more or less completed
only in the middle of the eleventh century.

If we want to characterize the "Modern Times" by one concept, we would
have to call this epoch the time of the emergence of a middle class, and
it will be remembered that the growth of the middle class in Europe was
also the decisive change between the Middle Ages and Modern Times in
Europe. The parallelism should, however, not be overdone. The gentry
continued to play a role in China during the Modern Times, much more
than the aristocracy did in Europe. The middle class did not ever really
get into power during the whole period.

While we will discuss the individual developments later in some detail,
a few words about the changes in general might be given already here.
The wars which followed Huang Ch'ao's rebellion greatly affected the
ruling gentry. A number of families were so strongly affected that they
lost their importance and disappeared. Commoners from the followers of
Huang Ch'ao or other armies succeeded to get into power, to acquire
property and to enter the ranks of the gentry. At about A.D. 1000 almost
half of the gentry families were new families of low origin. The state,
often ruled by men who had just moved up, was no more interested in the
aristocratic manners of the old gentry families, especially no more
interested in their genealogies. When conditions began to improve after
A.D. 1000, and when the new families felt themselves as real gentry
families, they tried to set up a mechanism to protect the status of
their families. In the eleventh century private genealogies began to be
kept, so that any claim against the clan could be checked. Clans set up
rules of behaviour and procedure to regulate all affairs of the clan
without the necessity of asking the state to interfere in case of
conflict. Many such "clan rules" exist in China and also in Japan which
took over this innovation. Clans set apart special pieces of land as
clan land; the income of this land was to