The medieval Chinese economic revolution made the lives of men like Shen Gua possible. A strong agricultural foundation fueled the growth of Song cities, which became dynamic centers of trade, commerce, and manufacturing. Within cities, population growth and prosperity accelerated economic specialization and sparked technological innovation. The dense network of roads, canals, and rivers that served the transportation needs of the Chinese economy ensured that new ideas and technologies would spread quickly from city to city and region to region. This vibrant and diverse economy set the tone for the era’s intellectual and cultural life and provided scholar-official elites with the wealth and leisure time to develop refined tastes and pursue a wide variety of personal interests.

This is not to say that scholar-officials like Shen Gua embraced commerce as a higher calling or were, as a group, determined proponents of free enterprise. The dominant place of Confucianism in elite culture ensured this would not be the case. Shen Gua himself supported reforms intended to protect the poor by placing the management of the entire Chinese economy in the hands of the government. Nonetheless, he was direct beneficiary of Song-era prosperity, and his many and varied intellectual pursuits were shaped by that context. Not only did he have the time and money to develop his ideas, Song technology and a well-developed transportation infrastructure made it possible for him to amass a sizeable library of works by authors both past and present and to exchange ideas with his fellow scholar-officials. As you examine the images of Song China included in this activity, think about the relationship between social and economic developments on the one hand, and intellectual and cultural developments on the other. How did prosperity and urban growth shape the intellectual activities of men like Shen Gua?