Emperor Wu of Song

So what I'd like to do today is take a few minutes to run down my latest experiences with the current goings on here in China as the COVID situation continues to rapidly shift, and then a brief look back on 2022 overall, where we've been and where we're headed.

And finally, to bring back a mini-sode from the vaults about one of the great thinkers and doers of ancient China, one Mr. Zhu Chongzhi from the ancient Liu Song and Southern Qi dynasties of the late 5th century.

All right, so first on the docket, China is opening back up.

And believe me, we are all just as surprised as any of you.

I give you Zu Chongzhi, the Mathematician of Heaven.

Please enjoy.

Zu Chongzhi was born in the year 429 in the capital of what was first Eastern Jin and then Liu Song, Nanjing, or again, as it was then known, Jiankang.

Though Chongzhi would spend his entire life south of the Yangtze River, his grandfather had actually been one of the many ethnically Han émigrés to the south when he felt he could no longer keep his family safe among the warfare of the northern Qianbei.

But both these dynasties held on to the things that worked, the bureaucracy, court rituals, the Chinese writing system, and, of course, the Buddhism.

Well, what do you say we wind back the clock to the fall of the Eastern Jin and the start of the first of the southern dynasties, the Liu Song? You remember Liu Yu from last episode.

He was the eastern Jin victorious general whose military campaigns to the north were able to win back a fair amount of lost northern territories, including Luoyang.

And as we've seen and will continue to see, Liu Yu, dizzy with success, seized the moment and overthrew the final eastern Jin emperor Gong and established his own dynasty, this one called the Liu Song.

Some call it the former Song, and others the Southern Song, or Nanchao Song, because this lesser-known Song dynasty was part of the Southern dynasties we're looking at right now.

But me personally, I've never heard it referred to anywhere except as the Liu Song, and it was Liu Yu who put the Liu into this dynasty name.

There were four or five southern dynasties in total.

Five if you count the eastern Jin, four if you start with the Liu Song in 420.