Three-Character Classic st.55-58, attrib. Wang Yinglin

[lnhammer]

55.
Song and Qi then followed,
Liang and Chen succeeded—
These Southern Dynasties
With capital Nanjing.

宋齐继
梁陈承
为南朝
都金陵

56.
Up north, the Yuan of Wei
Divided East and West.
The Yuwen clan had Zhou.
The Gao of Qi rose up.

北元魏
分东西
宇文周
兴高齐

57.
At last we come to Sui,
Uniting all the land.
The reign was passed on once
And then they lost the throne.

迨至隋
一土宇
不再传
失统绪

58.
Then Gaozu, Duke of Tang,
Gathered righteous troops,
Ended the Sui unrest,
And founded a new state.

唐高祖
起义师
除隋乱
创国基

• 55: The speedrun account skips the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms period (304-439), with lots of duking it out, and jumps straight to the Northern & Southern Dynasties (420-589), where the two core regions of China (centered on the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers) were each ruled by a succession of dynasties duking it out with each other. These are the four Southern Dynasties. • 56: These are the first five Northern Dynasties with their ruling families (there’s three Weis: an initial Northern that split into simultaneous Eastern and Western). (Note btw that Yuan is the sinicized family name the Tuoba, a Xianbei clan from the steppes, adopted when they declared themselves to actually be Han after ruling northern China for a century.) • 57: The Sui, a northern dynasty, reunited the empire (589), but as with the Qin, the second Sui emperor was killed by rebels (618). • 58: Gaozu of Tang won the next scramble for power, founding the Tang Dynasty (618-907). (Fun fact: Following Han’s example, Gaozu “lofty ancestor” was the traditional regnal name for a dynastic founder. After the Tang, the tradition was changed to use Taizu “great ancestor.”)

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

Even skipping it gives a graspable structure for recollecting all those dynasties.

[lnhammer]

Aside from Chen and Sui (thanks to ghost poems) and Northern Wei (thanks to Mulan), I'll be darned if I can keep all the muddled parts straight without a cheat sheet. The bigger, more stable dynasties, I've got down pretty well.

[sartorias]

Yep, same. Probably several steps behind you.