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2. The two main political leaders were Wendi who created granaries to supply food for everyone and built Grand Canal, and Yangdi, who was the son of Wendi who was crazy and led the downfall. Wendi reunited the empire after the fall of the Han and the warring states. Buddhism basically became a state religion and Sui increased their focus on luxury and materialism coupled with incompetent military leadership.

6. A restored scholar-gentry elite and reworked Confucian ideology helped the Tang to maintain imperial unity. The power of the aristocracy was reduced. Political authority henceforth was shared by imperial families and scholar-gentry bureaucrats. The bureaucracy, subject to strict controls, reached from the imperial court to district levels of administration. A Bureau of Censors watched all officials.

9. The Confucian revival threatened Buddhism's place of in Chinese life. Many previous rulers had been strong Buddhist supporters. Chinese monks gave the foreign religion Chinese qualities. Elite Chinese accepted Zen Buddhism which stressed meditation and appreciation of natural and artistic beauty. Early Tang rulers continued to patronize Buddhism, especially Empress Wu. She endowed monasteries, commissioned colossal statues of Buddha, and sought to make Buddhism the state religion.

11. The Song never matched the Tang in political or military strength. To prevent a return of the conditions ending Tang rule, the military was subordinated to scholar-gentry civilians. By early Song times, the south was the leader in crop production and population. The canal system made government of the south by northern capitals possible. Food from the south could be distributed in the north, while the south was opened to migrations and commercial development.

12. Neo-Confucians believed that the cultivation of personal morality was the highest human goal. Confucian learning, they argued, produced superior men to govern and teach others. Neo-Confucian thinking had a lasting impact on intellectual life. Hostility to foreign thought prevented the entry of innovations from other societies, while stress on tradition and stifled critical thinking within China.

21. The Taika reforms aimed at revamping the administration along Chinese lines. Intellectuals and aristocrats absorbed Chinese influenced. The common people looked to Buddhist monks for spiritual and secular assistance, and meshed Buddhist beliefs with traditional religion. The Taika reforms failed. The aristocracy returned to Japanese traditions; the peasantry reworked Buddhism into a Japanese creed. The emperor lost power to aristocrats and provincial lords.

34. Chinese administrators presided over the introduction of Chinese culture. Viets attended Chinese schools, wehre they learned Chinese script and studied the Confucian classics. They took exams for administrative posts. The incorporation of Chinese techniques made Vietnamese agriculture the most productive in Southeast Asia nd led to higher population density. The use of Chinese political and military organization gave the Viets ad decisive advantage over the Indianized peoples to the west and south.

47. For the first time in almost fifty years, the Mamluks, a Muslim army, launched an attack on the Mongol base in Syria. A few months later, a second Mamluk attack was successful in driving the Mongols out of Syria. The Mamluks continued to defeat the Mongols for the entire time of their presence in the region.