from the north. The north had always, beyond question, been militarily
superior, because its ruling class had consisted of warlike peoples. Yet
it was not a northerner who had united China but a Chinese though, owing
to mixed marriages, he was certainly not entirely unrelated to the
northern peoples. The rule, however, of the actual northern peoples was
at an end. The start of the Sui dynasty, while the Chou still held the
north, was evidence, just like the emergence in the north-east some
thirty years earlier of the Northern Ch'i dynasty, that the Chinese
gentry with their landowning basis had gained the upper hand over the
warrior nomads.

The Chinese gentry had not come unchanged out of that struggle.
Culturally they had taken over many things from the foreigners,
beginning with music and the style of their clothing, in which they had
entirely adopted the northern pattern, and including other elements of
daily life. Among the gentry were now many formerly alien families who
had gradually become entirely Chinese. On the other hand, the
foreigners' feudal outlook had influenced the gentry, so that a sense
of distinctions of rank had developed among them. There were Chinese
families who regarded themselves as superior to the rest, just as had
been the case among the northern peoples, and who married only among
themselves or with the ruling house and not with ordinary families of
the gentry. They paid great attention to their genealogies, had the
state keep records of them and insisted that the dynastic histories
mentioned their families and their main family members. Lists of
prominent gentry families were set up which mentioned the home of each
clan, so that pretenders could easily be detected. The rules of giving
personal names were changed so that it became possible to identify a
person's genealogical position within the family. At the same time the
contempt of the military underwent modification; the gentry were even