Division and the Sui-Tang Golden Age
The period of division after the Han, Buddhism's spread and the cave temples of Dunhuang and Longmen, the Sui reunification and the Grand Canal, the Tang's cosmopolitan empire and Chang'an, Empress Wu Zetian, Tang poetry, the examination system, Tang contacts with Korea, Japan and Central Asia, the An Lushan rebellion, and decline.
A cosmopolitan empire
Tang Chang'an hosted communities of Sogdian merchants, Persian Zoroastrians, Nestorian Christians (recorded on the Xi'an Stele of 781) and Muslims. Japan and Korea modelled their capitals, law codes and writing on Tang examples. The world's oldest dated printed book, a copy of the Diamond Sutra printed in 868, was found in the Dunhuang caves.
Arthur Wright, The Sui Dynasty (1978); Mark Edward Lewis, China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (2009); Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire (2nd ed., 2015); British Library on the Diamond Sutra (868).