Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms: division as a breeding ground for renewal

After the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907, a period of political fragmentation began that became engraved in Chinese history as the "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms." For fifty years — from 907 to 960 — five short-lived dynasties succeeded one another in rapid succession in the north, while in the south and west ten independent kingdoms pursued their own paths. It was a time of instability and war, but also of remarkable cultural and economic dynamism, and of unexpected impulses for Traditional Chinese Medicine.

A fragmented empire

The fall of the Tang dynasty left behind a power vacuum that no single state could quickly fill. In the north, the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou followed one another in rapid succession — dynasties that each lasted only a few decades or less. In the north and northeast, non-Chinese peoples took advantage of the division to establish their own states. The Khitan, originating from what is now Manchuria, founded the Liao dynasty in 947 and claimed part of traditionally Chinese territory, the Sixteen Prefectures.

In the south and west, ten independent kingdoms emerged, each with its own administration, culture, and economy. Vietnam became definitively independent from China during this period — a separation that continues to this day. The economic center of gravity gradually shifted from the north to the south of the Yangtze River, a shift that would influence Chinese economy and culture for centuries.

Medical knowledge in times of division

Paradoxically, the political division of the Five Dynasties period also created opportunities for the spread of medical knowledge. The separate kingdoms each had their own courts and cultural centers, where scholars and physicians could find protection and patronage. Medical texts circulated across the borders of the small states, and regional diversity stimulated the exchange of treatment methods and herbal knowledge.

Moreover, during this period printing technology — invented in the Tang era — came into increasingly wider use. Medical texts could now, for the first time, be distributed in larger print runs, which greatly increased the accessibility of medical knowledge. This had direct consequences for the democratization of TCM: knowledge that had previously been exclusive to a small elite of scholars and court physicians gradually became accessible to a broader group of practitioners.

The transition to Song reunification

The period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms ended in 960 when Zhao Kuangyin, a military commander of the Later Zhou, seized power and founded the Song dynasty. Under his leadership, China was reunited once again — not completely, because the Khitan Liao dynasty retained its northern territories, but sufficiently to usher in a new era of stability and flourishing.

For TCM, the Song reunification marked the starting signal for a new period of large-scale medical encyclopedias, state-sponsored pharmacological works, and the further institutionalization of medicine. The fifty years of division were over — but the medical knowledge that had been preserved, spread, and enriched during that period would form the basis for the Song flourishing that followed.