The Jurchens, who arose between the white mountains and the black waters, lived a simple and simple life for a long time due to the limitations of the natural environment and their own productivity levels, until the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, the Jurchens made new changes in their social life through their contacts with the Khitan, Bohai and Han ethnic groups.
During the Liao Dynasty, the Jurchens were mainly engaged in animal husbandry, fishing, hunting, and gathering, and their diet should be based on livestock products and various poultry and wild fruits. After the emergence of primitive agriculture, the Jurchens "were able to brew chyme into wine".
By the end of the Liao Dynasty, the Jurchen "diet consisted of brewing wine, beans as sauce, half-raw rice as rice, raw dog blood, and green onions and leeks. The food utensils have no pottery or daggers, and they are all made of wood as basins. Between spring and summer, stop using wooden pots to store fresh porridge, and as many people as they want, use long-handled small wooden dippers to count handles, and return to the ring to eat. The porridge meat tastes not much taste, stopping at raw fish, roe raw, and occasionally roasted meat. Winter is also served cold, but rice is served on wooden plates and soup in wooden bowls. The taste of rice and porridge is the same. Drinking is nothing, just use a wooden dipper, from top to bottom, cyclically. Cooking with leftover meat and vegetables, rotting and entering, is normal." It can be seen that the diet of the Jurchens was monotonous and coarse, and it remained so until the early years of the establishment of the Jin Dynasty.
"Jin is good and white, with braided hair hanging down the shoulders, different from the Khitan. The earlobe is a gold ring, with hair on the back of the skull, tied with colored silk. The rich use pearl gold ornaments. The woman had braided hair in a bun and no crown. Since the extinction of the Liao invasion of the Song Dynasty, there were gradually literary ornaments, and women were wrapped in easy scarves or headscarves, as they liked. As for the clothes, they are still the same. There are no silkworms in the native products, but there are many weaving cloths, and the nobility is distinguished by the thickness of the cloth.
And in a barren place, it is not a skin that protects against the cold, so it is obeyed by both rich and poor. The rich often wear quilted cotton shafts in spring and summer, and also use muslin cloth occasionally. In autumn and winter, the skin of a mink, a green mouse, a fox raccoon or a lamb is used as a fur, or as a silk four-sleeved. The poor wear cloth as garments in spring and summer, and oxen, horses, pigs, sheep, cats, dogs, fish, snakes, or roe and deer skins in autumn and winter, and hakama socks with skins. To women's clothes, daily coats, not collars, such as men's dresses, Japanese brocade skirts. The skirt is two feet on the left and right, and it is circled with iron bars, wrapped in embroidery, and covered with a single skirt." The stone carved images that exist today in Acheng Yagou, Heilongjiang, provide image information to understand the costumes of the upper classes of society in the early Jin Dynasty.
The early Jurchens "had no room in the old customs, negative mountains and rivers, beams and trees, covered with soil, summer with water and grass to live, winter people in it, migration is not frequent." It was not until the ancestors settled in Haigushui that there was a "system of dongyu": "Its custom is to live in the valley, with wood as a fence, a house several feet high, no tiles, covered with wood panels, or birch bark, or made of grass." The walls and fences are all made of wood, and the doors are facing east. The ring house is a bed of earthen under which a blaze is burned, and the sleeping room is placed on it, called an kang, to keep it warm." This is the style of folk houses that are still maintained in many parts of Tohoku today.
The Jurchen had already formed a monogamous marriage system of extra-clan marriage at the latest by the time of the first ancestor Hanpu, but the remnants of succession, servitude, polygamy, and same-surname marriages existed for a long time, of which only same-surname marriages were strictly prohibited during the reign of Jin Taizu.
After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, the royal family Wanyan clan implemented a strict hereditary marriage system, and marriage was limited to the large clans such as Tudan, Tang Kuo, Pucha, Xiao Lao, and Servant San, "the Son of Heaven will marry and the princess will marry", with very few exceptions for the Jin generation.
The Jurchen marriage customs still retain the elements of arranged marriages and marriages based on property, but there are also factors that reflect the freedom of marriage, "The poor sing songs on the way with the year of the woman and the bamboo shoots." His song is also a self-narration of family lineage, women's work, and color, in order to extend the meaning of marriage. If the listener desires to marry, he returns with him. The rear courtesy came to the woman's house to tell her parents."
Since the establishment of the monogamous marriage system, the most basic unit of the Jurchen social structure has been the small family, but out of the need to obtain means of subsistence, the tradition of family "clustering" was maintained until the time of Kim Sejong.
In the family, the head of the family has absolute control over the family members, the husband over the wives and children, and the master over the slaves. In the early Jin Dynasty, the distinction between wives and concubines and the concubines of their children was not particularly strict. After the middle period, the Confucian concepts of filial piety and chastity had a great influence on families of all classes of Jurchen society.
In the early days, the Jurchens practiced burial, and experienced changes from no coffins and sealed trees to wooden coffins, stone letters and other burial tools. After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, cremation was gradually popularized under the influence of Khitan and other ethnic burial customs. In addition, the Jurchens also practiced burial customs such as martyrdom, noodles, and cooking.
The Jurchens mainly accepted the influence of the Han people, and almost all the festivals that were popular in the Central Plains became the festivals of the Jin Dynasty. At the same time, based on the cultural traditions of the Jurchens, these festivals were given new content, such as the Dragon Boat Festival, the worship of the sky of Chongjiu, and the custom of shooting willows.
The festival with the characteristics of the Jurchen nation is the "Stealing Day" on the 16th day of the first month of each year, which inherits the Khitan custom, on this day, anyone who steals property up to the woman is not punished.
After the Jurchens entered the Central Plains, with the complete transformation to an agrarian economy and the cessation of large-scale wars, riding and shooting was preserved as a sports and entertainment in the social life of the Jurchens.
The rulers of the Jin Dynasty also hoped to maintain the martial and tenacious spiritual outlook of their ancestors through this activity, prevent the weakening of culture, and advocated and supported riding and shooting. The annual Dragon Boat Festival is also a sports entertainment closely related to riding and shooting. Batting was a sports activity often performed by the upper echelons of Jin Dynasty society, especially as a physical exercise in the army.
The religious beliefs of the Jurchens are very complex, the early Jurchens like many northern peoples believe in animist shamanism, shamans play a very important role in the social life of the Jurchens, not only as a medium for people to dialogue with heaven, but also engaged in activities such as healing diseases and disasters, participating in or presiding over major ceremonies, the famous military general in the early years of the Jin Dynasty, Yan Xiyin, was a shaman.
Soon after the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, under the promotion and protection of the ruling class, Buddhism and Taoism spread rapidly in the Jurchen populated areas, and its influence greatly exceeded that of shamanism, and monasteries were built in Huining Mansion, Qianshan and other places, and the monks were "majestic like kings and teachers, and the lord of the country sometimes worshipped them", "although the noble Qi Wang clan, many men and women were monks and nuns".
Buddhism had a profound impact on the social life and spiritual outlook of all strata of the Jurchen people. After the destruction of the Liao and Northern Song dynasties, the Jin Dynasty ruling clique protected Buddhist temples and temples throughout the north, further promoting the spread of religion.
During the confrontation between the north and the south of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, the new development of northern Taoism was the founding of Quanzhen Sect in the seventh year of Dading (1167) when Wang Zhe fused the Confucian precepts of Zhongxiao Buddhism and the Taoist Neidan doctrine in Ninghai, Shandong.
Wang Zhe weighed Yangzi, and there were also Danyang Zi Ma Yu, Changzhen Zi Tan Zhiduan, Changchun Ziqiu Zhiji, Changchun Zi Qiu Zhiji, Changsheng Zi Liu Zhixuan, Yuyang Zi Wang Zhiyi, Guangning Zi Hao Datong, and Qingjing Sanren Sun Buji, collectively known as the Seven Zhenren.
The Quanzhen Sect was protected by the rulers of the Jin Dynasty, and Jin Shizong and Jin Zhangzong successively summoned Qiu Zhiji and Wang Zhiyi to lecture on the scriptures, give them the number of teachers, and build Taoist temples. In addition, the Jin Dynasty also had the Daojiao Sect founded by Liu Deren and the Taiyi Sect founded by Xiao Baozhen.
The political system of the Jin Dynasty was basically adapted to the social development of the Jin Dynasty after the reform and adjustment of Emperor Jin Xizong, Wanyanliang and Jin Shizong, laying the foundation for the stable development of northern Chinese society.
In praising Jin Zhangzong's achievements, the "History of Jin" said: "Emperor Zhangzong reigned for 20 years, Emperor Chengshizong ruled for a long time, Unai was well-off, he was righteous and happy, he revised the criminal law, established the official system, and the cultural relics of the seal became a generation of rulers." He also asked the group of ministers Han Xuan to comprehensively check the name and the method of the Tang Dynasty examination, and he wanted to cross the Liao and Song dynasties and compare them with the Han and Tang dynasties, which can also be said to be those who are interested in aspirations. ”
However, various social contradictions rapidly intensified during the reign of Jin Zhangzong, which was also a turning point for the Jin Dynasty from prosperity to decline. For a long time, although the rulers of the Jin Dynasty tried to make a difference in easing ethnic contradictions, the national policy of "taking the Jurchens as the foundation" emphasized sticking to the old customs of the Jurchens, which set up obstacles to the social progress of the Jurchens and their interaction with other ethnic groups.
Land grabbing was carried out many times to satisfy the land needs of the Jurchen Meng'an Muke households at the expense of depriving the Han peasants of all their land, which aggravated ethnic contradictions. The intensification of tax exploitation and the indiscriminate issuance of money to the people of all ethnic groups have intensified class contradictions.
The ruling clique headed by the emperor became irrevocably corrupt and degenerate, especially the internal strife of the imperial family and the interference of foreign qi in government, which seriously weakened the ruling function of the Jin dynasty regime. During the Ming and Cheng'an years, the Khitan people's uprising broke out in the north, and in the second year of Zhenyou (1214), a large-scale Red Jacket Army uprising broke out in Yidu.
By this time, Temujin had unified the Mongolian plateau and launched a war against the Jin dynasty. The rule of the Jin Dynasty declined amid internal and external difficulties, and it collapsed in the third year of Tianxing (1234) under the combined attack of the Mongols and the Southern Song Dynasty.