Indeed, in this next part of the story of China, we will see one of the great epochs of civilisation that laid the foundations of the medieval and early modern world, driving social and economic, as well as cultural, change. The Tang bequeathed to the modern world a Chinese cultural empire across East Asia, Korea and Japan, as Rome would hand down Latin culture across the West. This, it might be said, is the age in which the modern pattern of human cultures across the Eurasian landmass began to crystallise.
