Sixteen Kingdoms

Pan gu da pu yi.

Last time in Part 5, we pretty much finished off the Three Kingdoms, the Sixteen Kingdoms, and the Jin Dynasty.

Today we're going to cover what happened after the fall of the Eastern Jin and the Sixteen Kingdoms.

Next up was the Northern and Southern Dynasties period.

Today's story involves a disunited China, politically fragmented once again.

And up to this point on the China history timeline, because they never got a chance to tell their own story, they became characters within the narrative of China's historians.

Up till now, we've seen, going back to the Siyi, the four barbarians of the Shang, These nomadic tribes who all lived along China's periphery were always a threat, a nuisance, and a people to fear.

Now as the Sixteen Kingdoms period becomes the Northern Dynasties period, we see things take an interesting turn when these once feared barbarians become, in many cases, even more cultured and consistent with Chinese traditional ways than the Han Chinese themselves.

So it's easy to see how the most sinicized of all these folks would be the ones to take to Buddhism the fastest and incorporate it into what they were building in northern China.

Before I get to the Northern Wei, let me mention one final dynasty from the Sixteen Kingdoms period.

This was the later Zhao.

This one in particular sort of stood out and deserved a special mention in this episode.