900 – 910s

Events in the 900s 3

• 618 – 907 Tang Dynasty — China's cosmopolitan golden age Poetry, silk, Buddhism and the world's largest empire The Tang dynasty is widely considered China's cultural peak. Its capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an) was the world's largest city with over a million inhabitants, cosmopolitan with merchants, monks and diplomats from across Asia. The Tang produced China's greatest poets — Li Bai and Du Fu — and saw Buddhism flourish. Woodblock printing was invented. China's civil service examination system was refined into the model used for 1,300 years.
• 618 – 907 Woodblock printing invented in China Reproducing text at scale — precursor to Gutenberg During the Tang dynasty, Chinese craftsmen developed woodblock printing — carving an entire page of text and images into a wooden block, inking it and pressing paper against it. The world's oldest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra (868 AD), was produced using this technique. It was brought to Europe via the Silk Road, where it inspired Gutenberg's movable type press six centuries later.
• 907 – 1279 Five Dynasties & Song Dynasty Gunpowder, printing, compass — China leads the world in technology The Song dynasty oversaw an economic and technological revolution. Gunpowder weapons, movable type printing (Bi Sheng, 1040), and the magnetic compass were all developed or perfected during this period. China's population reached 100 million. Despite never matching the Tang's military power and eventually losing northern China to the Jurchen Jin dynasty, the Song's commercial economy and urban culture were the most sophisticated in the world.