The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Summary

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–979 CE) stands as China’s most fractured era between the Tang Dynasty’s collapse and the Song Dynasty’s reunification, a seventy-two-year interregnum of political fragmentation, military warlordism, and regional autonomy. Following the Tang’s inability to contain the regional military governors (jiedushi) after the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763 CE), the empire devolved into five short-lived dynasties in the north—Later Liang (907–923), Later Tang (923–936), Later Jin (936–946), Later Han (947–950), and Later Zhou (951–960)—and ten independent kingdoms in the south and periphery, each claiming legitimacy and vying for supremacy. Despite the political chaos and endemic warfare, the period witnessed remarkable cultural and technological continuity: woodblock printing advanced rapidly (most famously with Feng Dao’s government-sponsored printing of the Confucian Classics, 932–953), Neo-Confucianism developed its foundational concepts, ceramics reached new refinement, and monumental landscape painting emerged as a major art form in the southern courts. The period ended when the Song Dynasty, rising from the Later Zhou’s northeastern base through the “Yellow Robe” coup of 960, systematically conquered the Ten Kingdoms and reunified China by 979, establishing the civil-bureaucratic patterns of governance that would define Chinese statecraft for the next millennium.

Background: The Tang Collapse and Huang Chao Rebellion

The Five Dynasties period did not begin suddenly but emerged from a century of Tang Dynasty decline. After the devastating An Lushan Rebellion (755–763 CE), Tang central authority never fully recovered. The court granted expanded military autonomy to regional commanders (jiedushi) as a pragmatic concession to the military reality of the time; by the ninth century, these governors had become hereditary regional rulers who kept local tax revenues, maintained their own armies, and transmitted their posts to their sons with minimal reference to the imperial center.

The final catalyst was the Huang Chao Rebellion (875–884 CE), one of the most destructive upheavals in Chinese history. Huang Chao (died 884), a failed examination candidate turned salt smuggler, rose to lead a mass uprising of peasants, bandits, and discontented militia across the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys. His forces sacked the great Tang capitals of Luoyang (880) and Chang’an (881), killing enormous numbers and looting the imperial city. The rebellion was eventually crushed, but it shattered the residual authority of the Tang court, which became dependent on rival warlords to restore any semblance of order.

Among Huang Chao’s former lieutenants was Zhu Wen (852–912), a low-born military adventurer who defected to the Tang side in 882 and received the honorific name Zhu Quanzhong (“Zhu the Fully Loyal”). Rising through the Tang military, Zhu Wen became the dominant power in the northeastern plains, controlling the critical Yellow River valley and gradually subordinating the Tang court to his will. In 904, he murdered Tang Emperor Zhaozong and installed a child, Emperor Ai, as his puppet. In 907, he forced Emperor Ai to abdicate and proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty he named the Later Liang, establishing its capital at Kaifeng. This moment—907 CE—marks the conventional beginning of the Five Dynasties period and the formal end of the Tang Dynasty.

The Five Northern Dynasties

In northern China, where the traditional imperial capitals (Chang’an and Luoyang) had been devastated and depopulated, five short-lived dynasties succeeded one another in rapid succession, each founded by military strongmen:

Later Liang (907–923)

Zhu Wen’s Later Liang controlled the central Yellow River valley from its capital at Kaifeng. Zhu Wen was a capable military organizer and attempted to restore administrative order by promoting officials based on competence rather than aristocratic birth, a pragmatic break with Tang elite traditions. However, his personal conduct was reputedly brutal, and he was murdered by his own son Zhu Yougui in 912; the dynasty never stabilized its succession. Later Liang spent its entire existence in conflict with the Shatuo Turkish-led state of Jin (precursor to Later Tang) in the northeast. In 923, the Later Tang forces defeated Later Liang and absorbed its territory.

Later Tang (923–936)

Later Tang was established by Li Cunxu (Emperor Zhuangzong, r. 923–926), the son of the Shatuo Turkish military leader Li Keyong, who had been a Tang loyalist commander throughout the Huang Chao period. Li Cunxu proclaimed himself an heir to the Tang imperial tradition (hence naming his state “Tang”) and initially demonstrated considerable military ability—his cavalry forces were superior to the Later Liang infantry on the northern plains. Later Tang restored something of the Tang bureaucratic apparatus, including civil examinations. However, Li Cunxu’s reign was troubled by court intrigues and military revolts; he was killed in a military mutiny in 926, and his successors—Li Siyuan (Emperor Mingzong, r. 926–933) and Li Congke (r. 934–936)—fought successive succession crises. Li Siyuan was actually one of the more capable rulers of the Five Dynasties period, providing a decade of relative stability (926–933) and reducing taxes. The dynasty collapsed when the Khitan Liao invaded with the support of the rebel general Shi Jingtang.

Later Jin (936–946)

Shi Jingtang (Emperor Gaozu, r. 936–942), a Shatuo general who rose through the Later Tang military, made the fateful decision to seek Khitan Liao support for his rebellion against Later Tang by offering the Liao the “Sixteen Prefectures” (Shiliu zhou)—the strategic region of northern Hebei and Shanxi, including the future site of Beijing (then called Youzhou). Ceding these sixteen prefectures in 938 gave the Liao control of the mountain passes separating the northern steppe from the Chinese interior, a geostrategic disaster that would haunt Chinese states for two centuries. In exchange, the Khitan Liao recognized Shi Jingtang as emperor and provided decisive military support to establish Later Jin. Shi Jingtang—though the older man—addressed the Liao emperor Yelü Deguang as his “father emperor” (fu huangdi) and styled himself the “son emperor,” a humiliating subordination that scandalized Chinese officials. Later Jin’s successor, Shi Chonggui, attempted to repudiate the relationship; the Liao invaded in 946 and dissolved the dynasty, briefly occupying the northern plains before withdrawing.

Later Han (947–950)

Liu Zhiyuan (Emperor Gaozu, r. 947–948), another Shatuo general, seized power as the Liao withdrew, proclaiming the Later Han dynasty. His three-year reign was marked by continued military competition with Liao forces and internal instability; his sudden death in 948 inaugurated a succession crisis. The Later Han collapsed after only four years when the general Guo Wei—who had served as its prime minister and military commander—was proclaimed emperor by his troops, establishing the Later Zhou.

Later Zhou (951–960)

The Later Zhou, under Guo Wei (r. 951–954) and especially his able adopted heir Chai Rong (Emperor Shizong, r. 954–959)—a nephew of Guo Wei’s empress—came closest among the Five Dynasties to genuine dynastic stability and successful state-building. Chai Rong was one of the most energetic and capable rulers of the era: he reformed the military by creating disciplined professional infantry to balance the cavalry-dominated armies of his predecessors; promoted civil administrators over military strongmen in policy decisions; standardized weights, measures, and currency; and began conquering neighboring territories to reunify the north.

Chai Rong also carried out a controversial Buddhist temple-destruction campaign (955), confiscating bronze statues and ritual objects from thousands of Buddhist monasteries to remelt for currency and weapons. This huichang-style suppression—named for the earlier Tang persecution under Emperor Wuzong (845 CE)—disrupted Buddhist institutions throughout northern China and damaged the standing of Buddhism among the northern elite.

Chai Rong died of illness in 959 at approximately thirty-eight years of age, leaving a seven-year-old son as heir. The resulting power vacuum created the opportunity for the general Zhao Kuangyin—Chai Rong’s most trusted military commander—to seize power in 960 and establish the Song Dynasty.

The Ten Kingdoms in the South

In southern and peripheral regions, where Tang authority had been attenuated but not destroyed by the ninth-century rebellions, more stable kingdoms emerged. These southern kingdoms often achieved greater continuity than their northern counterparts, maintaining hereditary succession and developing distinctive administrative and cultural traditions.

Former Shu (907–925) and Later Shu (934–965), located in the fertile Sichuan Basin (Shu is the classical name for Sichuan), became refuges for fleeing northern scholars and artisans. The Sichuan Basin’s natural defenses—surrounded by mountain ranges passable only through narrow gorges—provided relative security. The Shu courts maintained Tang literary traditions, preserving much poetry and cultural practice that might otherwise have been lost. The anthology Hua Jian Ji (“Among the Flowers”), compiled by Zhao Chongzuo in Later Shu in 940, preserves the earliest substantial corpus of ci poetry (lyrics written to existing musical tunes), a genre that would become central to Song Dynasty literature.

Southern Tang (937–975) occupied the Yangtze River valley centered on the capital at modern Nanjing (Jiangning). Southern Tang’s rulers claimed Tang imperial lineage and maintained the most sophisticated court culture among the Ten Kingdoms, patronizing calligraphers, painters, and poets. The last ruler of Southern Tang, Li Yu (r. 961–975, known posthumously as Li Houzhu, “the Last Ruler”), was himself one of the greatest ci poets in Chinese literary history. After surrendering to Song forces in 975, Li Yu lived as a captive in Kaifeng, where he continued writing poetry of devastating personal loss—poems about exile, longing, and the memory of his former court—until he was reportedly poisoned on the Song emperor’s orders in 978. His poems became canonical expressions of melancholy in Chinese literature, widely memorized for a millennium.

Wu (902–937)—the Yang-family state founded by the warlord Yang Xingmi in the Huai and lower-Yangtze region—was the predecessor of Southern Tang: in 937 the regent Xu Zhigao (later Li Bian) deposed the last Wu ruler and proclaimed Southern Tang, absorbing Wu’s territory and administration.

Wuyue (907–978), ruled by the Qian family from the capital at Hangzhou, controlled the East China Sea coast and the Yangtze delta’s silk-producing hinterland. Unlike other kingdoms, Wuyue adopted a deliberately submissive policy toward the stronger northern dynasties, paying tribute and avoiding military conflict to preserve commerce. Wuyue’s rulers were enthusiastic patrons of Buddhism, sponsoring the construction of pagodas and commissioning enormous printing projects of Buddhist scriptures. The king Qian Chu (r. 948–978) reportedly distributed 84,000 miniature bronze stupas (reliquary towers) as votive offerings, and sponsored major woodblock printing projects. When the Song consolidated power, Wuyue peacefully submitted in 978, sparing the region the destruction of military conquest.

Chu (907–951), ruled by the Ma family from Changsha, occupied central Hunan and the middle Yangtze region before being absorbed by Southern Tang in 951.

Min (909–945) controlled Fujian Province on the southeastern coast, positioned at the intersection of maritime and overland trade routes.

Nanhan (917–971) governed Guangdong and Guangxi from its capital at modern Guangzhou, maintaining maritime trade connections with Southeast Asia.

Northern Han (951–979), a Shatuo-founded remnant state in Shanxi, was the last of the kingdoms to be conquered by Song reunification, sustaining itself through Khitan Liao military support until the Song finally subdued it in 979.

Jingnan (924–963), also called Nanping, was a tiny territorial state in Hubei that survived among the stronger surrounding powers by paying tribute to several overlords simultaneously—an opportunistic policy that earned its rulers the mocking epithet “the high spongers” (Gao laizi).

Cultural and Technological Continuity

Despite political fragmentation, intellectual and cultural life not only persisted but advanced during the Five Dynasties period. The decentralization of political authority, paradoxically, created conditions for regional experimentation and preserved multiple centers of cultural patronage.

Feng Dao and the Printing of the Confucian Classics

The most consequential cultural achievement of the Five Dynasties was the first government-sponsored woodblock printing of the Confucian Classics. Feng Dao (882–954), a career official who served under ten emperors across five successive dynasties—later celebrated and criticized in equal measure as the archetype of the survivor-bureaucrat—proposed in 932 to the Later Tang court that the official canonical text of the Nine Confucian Classics be established in print. The project, begun in 932 under Later Tang and continued through Later Jin and Later Han, was finally completed in 953 under Later Zhou, producing 130 volumes of the Jiuching (Nine Classics) over twenty-one years.

Before this project, the canonical Confucian texts were preserved in stone inscriptions and hand-copied manuscripts; errors accumulated and versions diverged. The printed Confucian Classics established a fixed, standardized text available in multiple copies throughout China. This printing project was the first large-scale secular printing endeavor in Chinese history, extending the technology of woodblock printing (previously used primarily for Buddhist texts since the seventh century) to the Confucian literary tradition that defined Chinese scholarship and governance. The project laid the foundation for the extraordinary proliferation of printed books in the Song Dynasty.

Landscape Painting

Monumental landscape painting emerged as a major artistic genre during the Five Dynasties period, particularly in the northern courts. Artists including Jing Hao (c. 850–c. 950), Guan Tong (active c. 907–960), and Li Cheng (c. 919–967) developed conventions for depicting towering mountains, misty valleys, rushing waterfalls, and bare winter forests, reducing the human figure to a tiny element within vast natural sublimity. This aesthetic—expressing the Daoist vision of humanity as a small but harmonious participant in the great natural order—became canonical in Song and later Chinese painting and profoundly influenced Japanese ink painting traditions as well.

Ceramics

Ceramics reached new peaks of refinement during this period, particularly in the southern kingdoms. The Longquan kilns in Wuyue (modern Zhejiang Province) produced qingci (celadon ware)—a pale jade-green glazed porcelain whose subtle color and translucent quality became synonymous with the highest aesthetic standards of Song taste. The Yaozhou kilns in the north and the Jingdezhen kilns in Jiangxi (then in Southern Tang territory) also developed during this period, establishing regional ceramic traditions that would continue for centuries. The aesthetic of celadon ware—restraint, subtlety, and an allusive relationship between the glaze color and precious jade—reflects the broader cultural tendency of the period to seek refinement amid turbulence.

Early Neo-Confucianism

Buddhist and Daoist philosophy continued to flourish during the Five Dynasties, and the intellectual synthesis that would later crystallize as Neo-Confucianism began to develop. The Tang scholar Li Ao (died c. 844), working at the Tang-Five Dynasties boundary, began integrating Buddhist concepts of mind and consciousness into Confucian moral philosophy, arguing that moral self-cultivation involved recovering an original pure nature obscured by desires and emotions. This synthesis—combining Confucian ethical imperatives with Buddhist-derived psychological analysis—set the stage for the fully developed Neo-Confucian system articulated by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) in the Song Dynasty.

The Khitan Liao and Northern Geopolitics

The Khitan Liao Dynasty (916–1125), founded by Abaoji (Emperor Taizu, r. 907–926) from pastoral peoples of Manchuria and Mongolia, was the dominant external power throughout the Five Dynasties period. Abaoji unified the Khitan confederation in 907—the same year as the Tang’s fall—and created a sophisticated dual administration, maintaining distinct institutions for governing the pastoral Khitan and the agrarian Chinese populations within Liao territory.

The Liao’s cession of the Sixteen Prefectures under Later Jin (938) gave the northern pastoral confederation direct access to the Chinese interior through the mountain passes, dramatically altering the geostrategic balance between steppe and sedentary powers. This loss prefigured the later Jurchen Jin Dynasty’s conquest of northern China (1127) and the Mongol Yuan Dynasty’s total conquest (1279), establishing a recurring pattern in which northern confederations used the mountain passes of the Sixteen Prefectures as an invasion route. The Song Dynasty would spend enormous resources—military campaigns, diplomatic efforts, and ultimately annual tribute payments—attempting to recover the Sixteen Prefectures or at least contain the Liao, without permanent success.

The Shatuo Turks—the Turkic people who founded Later Tang, Later Jin, and Later Han—had been incorporated into the Tang military apparatus as elite cavalry forces in the late eighth century, rewarded with Chinese surnames (Li, Shi, Liu) and official titles. During the Five Dynasties, Shatuo generals represented a hybrid elite: culturally Sinicized but maintaining steppe military traditions and cavalry-based warfare. The Shatuo dynasties gradually fell under increasing Liao suzerainty, forced to pay tribute and acknowledge the Khitan khans as the paramount northern power—a subordination of formerly powerful Chinese states to steppe confederations unprecedented since the Han-Xiongnu relationship.

Reunification and the Yellow Robe Stratagem (960)

The fragmentation ended in 960 through one of Chinese history’s most famous bloodless coups. The Later Zhou general Zhao Kuangyin was commanding forces marching to repel a supposed Liao incursion when his soldiers mutinied at the staging camp at Chenqiao (modern Zhongmou, Henan). On January 1, 960, troops draped a yellow imperial robe over Zhao Kuangyin’s shoulders—the classical gesture of proclaiming an emperor—and acclaimed him as ruler. This event, known as the Yellow Robe Incident (huangpao jiashen, “the yellow robe placed on the body”), is traditionally narrated as a spontaneous popular acclamation; most historians regard it as a coordinated coup organized by Zhao Kuangyin’s closest officers, with or without his explicit prior approval. Zhao returned to Kaifeng, accepted the Later Zhou child emperor’s abdication, and proclaimed the Song Dynasty.

Song Reunification (960–979)

Rather than perpetuating the military-warlord system that had enabled the Five Dynasties, Zhao Kuangyin—Emperor Taizu of Song—immediately implemented a civilian-supremacy policy. In a famous dinner with his leading generals (the “Release the Army over a Cup of Wine” episode, c. 961), he reportedly persuaded his military commanders to accept rich estates and retirement in exchange for relinquishing their armies and ambitions, breaking the cycle of military coups that had defined the previous half-century. Song military appointments were thereafter controlled by civilian officials, and military commanders were frequently rotated to prevent them from developing independent power bases.

Song forces systematically conquered the Ten Kingdoms:

• Jingnan and Chu: 963
• Former and Later Shu: 965
• Southern Han (Nanhan): 971
• Southern Tang: 975 (Li Yu surrendered; the last ruler was taken captive to Kaifeng)
• Wuyue and Min remnants: 978 (peaceful submission)
• Northern Han: 979 (the last holdout, conquered after the death of its Liao protector’s willingness to defend it)

The conquest of Northern Han in 979 completed China’s territorial reunification for the first time since the Tang’s effective dissolution in the mid-ninth century.

Legacy

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period shaped Chinese civilization in ways outlasting its turbulent surface history. The military disasters of the period—particularly the loss of the Sixteen Prefectures to the Liao—produced a lasting Song-era preference for civilian rule over military power, enshrined in the motto “value the civil, depreciate the martial” (zhong wen qing wu). This civilian emphasis, while preventing the military coups that had plagued the Five Dynasties, also left the Song militarily weaker than the Tang, eventually contributing to its vulnerability to northern invasion.

The cultural achievements of the southern kingdoms—their ceramics, painting, printing, and literary forms—were absorbed by the Song and formed the foundation of what many consider China’s classical high culture. The ci poetic form developed in the Shu courts became the dominant literary mode of the Song Dynasty. The celadon aesthetic of Wuyue informed the Song’s celebrated ceramic traditions. The woodblock printing technology advanced during the Five Dynasties enabled the Song’s extraordinary literary explosion, eventually producing China’s first printed newspaper and encyclopedia.

The period thus demonstrates a pattern recurring in Chinese history: political fragmentation producing cultural dispersal and regional experimentation, followed by reunification that harvests and synthesizes the regional innovations into a new imperial synthesis.

Related

• The Tang Dynasty
• The An Lushan Rebellion
• The Song Dynasty
• The Yuan Dynasty
• Printing and Woodblock Printing
• Porcelain and Ceramics
• Confucianism
• Taoism
• Buddhism in China
• The Yangtze River
• The Grand Canal
• Shanghai

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• Twitchett, Denis C. and Fairbank, John K. (eds.). The Cambridge History of China: Volume 5, The Five Dynasties and the Sung. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
• Lorge, Peter. War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795. Routledge, 2005.
• Standen, Naomi. Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossings in Liao China. University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
• Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. University of Hawaii Press, 2003.
• Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. Columbia University Press, 1962.