I’m used to having history get mangled in the newspapers, goodness knows the People’s Daily does it all the time, but this piece in the New York Times by IHT art editor Souren Melikian probably deserves a special award of some kind.
For example:
At the height of its maximum extension around the first or second century A.D., the Chinese empire ruled by the Han dynasty nominally controlled the area. Many centuries later, the Mongols overran Uighur lands in the course of their conquests, which embraced territories stretching from the borders of present-day Poland in the west to the Pacific shores of China and included the Middle East. But the great Song dynasty, under which Chinese culture rose to an apex around the 11th or 12th century, showed no interest in such undertakings. Neither did the Ming, who re-established Chinese unity after defeating the Mongol dynasty, who ruled China from 1279 to 1368.
Calling the Song the “apex of Chinese history,” especially from the perspective of an art historian, is a judgment call, but the Song were certainly not much of a military power. Hemmed in by a bevy of hostile groups and eventually overrun, the Song hardly had an opportunity