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November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

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Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

home home millennium century 1999

DECEMBER 31, 1999 - JANUARY 7, 2000 VOL. 25 NO. 52

History Repeating
At the turn of the last millennium, Asian civilizations led the world. Highlights from the region in the year 1000

By JACQUELINE POH


The 300-year construction boom at the Khmer capital Angkor was in full flowering as the second millennium dawned
Dominic Faulder - Bureay Bangkok

ARCHITECTURE The walls of the large, prominent temples of India may have been lined with statuesque Hindu gods, but it was the subcontinent's Buddhist legacy that informed the architecture of most of Asia. The capital of Song dynasty China, Pien-ching was a city of towers, dominated by a 110-meter-high pagoda housing a relic of Indian emperor Ashoka. Almost 1,000 years after the religion first reached East Asia, giant Buddha figures abounded. In Japan, nobles blended esoteric Buddhism with Jodo, a faith in the rebirth of a "pure land," and built huge family temples, mixing together secular and religious elements. But it was in the Khmer kingdom that Buddhist architecture reached its aesthetic zenith. In the capital, Angkor (from the Sanskrit nagara, meaning city), the intricate style that would later be applied to the world's largest religious building, Angkor Wat, was already in evidence. Some of the temple city's most elegant wats were constructed around the cusp of the millennium.

TRADE Then, as now, commerce was central to Asian life. With China largely reunited under the Song Dynasty, the legendary Silk Route was back in operation, following a century during which caravans were plundered by bandits from neighboring states. Running from the former Tang capital Changan (modern Xian) via the Gansu corridor, Dunhuang and Kashgar, the trail then took various paths to India and the West. Conditions were treacherous. Temperatures in the parched Taklimakan desert ranged from over 50°C to -20°C in a single day. Fierce gales made sandstorms a common sight. Merchants knew the area as the "Land of Death." The South China Sea meanwhile was awash with brave seafaring traders. An archaeological discovery on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1976 unearthed wooden balanghai boats, some up to 15 meters long, used on trade missions to Song China, New Guinea and most areas between - including the spice-rich Moluccas and camphor-producing Borneo.

    MILLENNIUM
The Millennium
Asia's golden age of the past and -- if the region gets its act together -- of the future as well

1000
Life, times and scenes of the continent a thousand years ago

Mementos
Celebrities fill a time capsule for the 2000s with icons of the present age

THE ARTS The respite from political upheaval afforded by the Song Dynasty was a boon for Chinese culture. Landscape paintings of black pine-soot ink on fine paper or silk enjoyed a golden era, with late-10th-century master Li Cheng followed after the turn of the millennium by Fan Kuan. Calligraphy and poetry also prospered and during the 11th century the three art forms were unified as poets inscribed paintings with their works. In literature there was renewed interest in the classics and Confucius. Japanese noblewomen were avid readers of romance novels and prose written in the form of diaries, such as Shikibu Murasaki's The Tale of Genji. Literary activity in Classical Sanskrit began to wane after 1,500 years of use.

COSTUME The dress of Asia's two greatest civilizations, India and China, greatly influenced the costume of their neighbors. China's mastery of silk weaving already had a 3,000-year history as the 10th century closed. The voluminous wide-sleeved pao robe, often richly patterned and embroidered to indicate the wearer's status, was widely worn in Japan - where it eventually morphed into the kimono. Chinese dress influenced Koreans, who nonetheless maintained a preference for two-piece oufits of jacket and trousers. The Chinese style also spread to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The Burmese drew from Indian culture, as did many nations of Southeast Asia. While Indian dress codes are complex signifiers of the caste system, the two mainstays of traditional costume, the dhoti and sari, were recognizable in the year 1000. Traditionally, both sexes were unclothed on the upper body, covering themselves instead with scarves, turbans and extensive hanging jewelry.

IDEAS The crossroads of Asia since the third century BC, the Silk Route ferried the ideas and beliefs that shaped Asia in the first millennium. Christianity and Buddhism trod the trail, as would Italian adventurer Marco Polo, whose 13th century-travels opened relations with the West. Islam too took the Silk Route and also was spread by sea to SoutheastAsia. Around 1000 the religion first gained a foothold in Northern India, as Muslim teachings spread from Central Asia.

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