Jurchen Jin conquer northern China

In January 1127 the army of the Jurchen Jin dynasty entered Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song, in what the Chinese call the Jingkang Incident. The Jin carried off the retired emperor Huizong, his son Emperor Qinzong, and thousands of members of the court, along with enormous quantities of treasure, books and craftsmen. Huizong, a famous painter and collector, died in captivity in Manchuria in 1135, and Qinzong never returned.¹³

The Jurchens were a people from Manchuria who had overthrown their Khitan overlords and founded the Jin in 1115. The Song court, eager to win back the northern lands it had lost to the Khitan Liao, made an alliance with the Jin against the Liao around 1120. The Jin destroyed the Liao quickly, then saw how weak and rich the Song were, and turned on their allies. They attacked in late 1125 and besieged Kaifeng twice, in 1126 and again in 1127, after the Song had broken a settlement. The great city, with its huge population and its wealth, fell.³⁴

A prince who had been away from the capital, Zhao Gou, escaped, and was proclaimed emperor Gaozong in 1127, starting what is called the Southern Song. The court settled at Hangzhou and the dynasty went on for another 150 years, south of the Huai River, with the Jin ruling the north. The loss of the heartland shifted China's economic and cultural center to the Yangzi valley and the southeast, and also left a long memory of humiliation, which the later patriotic cult of generals like Yue Fei was built on.²³⁴