It was at this point that Li Yuan, who had been a governor in northern China, declared himself the new emperor, taking the reign name Gaozu, ‘the Great Founder’. He was a member of the Li family, one of the military clans from the far northwest – tough, horse-riding frontier people. Though he had to fight off rivals in the aftermath of the Sui, by his death in 626 CE he had reunited the country. It would be the beginning of one of the most brilliant epochs in Chinese history: the Tang.
