Wang Anshi

On today’s podcast, we go all the way back to the Northern Song Dynasty, one of the highpoints of Chinese culture, but also a point in which consensus was breaking down. Infighting in the 1070’s began a process that would weaken China to the point which it could not face up against its external threats and would collapse in 1127, losing half of Song territory. Today’s podcast is on Wang Anshi, one of the scholar-politicians who was at the heart of this infighting. We’ll look at three of his poems in a part of a mini-series on Song figures.