But in 960 a new power, Song (960-1279), reunified most of China Proper. The Song period divides into two phases: Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279). The division was caused by the forced abandonment of north China in 1127 by the Song court, which could not push back the nomadic invaders.
但是在公元960年，出现了一个新势力，宋（960-1279），重新统一了大部分中国。宋朝分为两个阶段：南宋（960-1127）和北宋（1127-1279）。分裂源于1127年，北方游牧民族的入侵，宋朝廷放弃了整个中国北方地区。
The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.
宋朝的创立者建造了一个有效的中央官僚机构，提拔了一批民间的学者做为官员。地区割据的首领和他们的同伙被中央指定的官员代替。这种官员任命制度使得权利高度集中在君王和他的统治机构手中，并且超过以往的任何一个朝代。
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners–the mercantile class–arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.
宋朝以其城区的高度发展而闻名，不仅仅是因为它的管理成效，还因为它是贸易中心，工业中心和海运中心。那些有土地的文官，通常也被称为贵族，住在店主，工匠和商人云集的省中心。一个新富裕起来的平民群体-商人-以经商和推广教育为途径；个人贸易盛行，商业贸易开始在邻省和全国范围内进行。拥有领地和在政府任职已经不是获得财富和声望的唯一途径了。
Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.
文化上，宋朝汲取了前几个世纪发展的精髓。在这些精髓中，不仅有唐朝的全才论，要求这个人集学者，诗人，画家和政治家的身份为一身，而且也有历史上的写作，绘画，书法和瓷器。宋朝的贤人开始研究孔子学说中关于哲学和政治的探讨。这种对孔子学说和远古社会的复兴，标志着佛学的衰落。佛学被中国人喻为异教，而且它提出的理论根本没办法解决中国现行的政治和其他社会问题。
The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi (朱熹b1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi’s philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
宋朝的新儒家哲学家，发现了一种把原始的历史文献净化的方法，即给它们写注释。这些学者中最有名的一个是朱熹（公元1130-1200年），他集儒家，佛学，道家和其它思想之所长，然后合成了王权理念，被从宋朝晚期一直沿用到19世纪后期。在科考制度上，朱熹观点融入了严格的官方教条，对上级和君王要绝对的服从，子从父纲，妻从夫纲，弟从兄纲。这些约束了近现代中国社会的发展，也导致了政治，社会和思想的矛盾，抑制了文化的和政治体制发展直到19世纪。同一时期，新儒家理论也同样在韩国，越南和日本的文化中占据了主导作用。
