and the Hanlin Academy at court was set up to encourage and teach talented scholars and litterateurs. Music and dance institute were set up to teach theatrical performers for palace entertainment. Under T'ang rule the court was splendid and some of the greatest cultural geniuses of the chinese tradition came about, such as the poets Li Po and Tu Fu as well as some of the most notable paiters Wu Tao-tzu and Wang Wei. (hucker 143) Hoever the T'ang would not rule for ever and their dynasty soon came to decline. Presure from invading arabs and turks . The T'ang stability began to fade around 760 and from there it was more in decline. Once again the Landlords began to regain control and social mobility declined . As central government weakend, early T'ang restraints on explotive landlordism, private commerce, and social mobility withered away; and gradually the social and political eminence of the old aristocratic class, the mainstay of early T'ang stability, was underminded by irreversible waves of social change. By the end of the eighth century, trends were developing that would bring about a vastly altered way of life in post T'ang age. (hucker 146) The T'ang Dynasty would eventually fall in 914 giving way to a period of instability know as the five dynasties era.With the unification of the Chinese state, first under the Han, and then next primarily under the T'ang, political and social concerns that preoccuoied early Confucian and Legalist thinkers gave way to new forms of thinking and new areas of concentration. With political stability now achieved, intellectuals could focus their energy on administrative routines, politics and institution building. Metaphysical and cosmological thinking, which had seemed rather capricious aberration in pre-Ch'in times now surged into the mainstream of China's intellectual history. (Hucker pg. 191) Thinkers began to contemplate larger questions of the universe and mans place in it. Taoism was given ne...
