Chinese crafts workers came across many technological innovations during the Tang and Song dynasties significantly touched many features of the Chinese political and social order and Chinese society. By significantly touching, it basically reinforced and prompted fundamental change in these Chinese principles. Some things that reflect this change are the innovations such as, porcelain, metallurgy, gunpowder, and naval technology. During the Tang dynasty these Chinese craft workers many styles of creating high-quality porcelain which was much more advanced than earlier pottery. Porcelain was not only lighter and thinner; it was also much more adaptable to more uses of the pottery. Porcelain was not only used as a temporary container or a long time possession keeper, but was also seen as a beautiful work of art therefore being used as decoration. Seeing as Tang and Song porcelain has been excavated all throughout the postclassical era’s trade networks it was clearly of some sort of importance to trading. Metallurgy is the science that deals with procedures used in extracting metals from their ores, purifying and alloying metals, and creating useful objects from metals. Chinese craftsmen mastered this concept thus creating stronger and more useful metals. They noticed that if they substituted coal with coke that they could create superior grades of metal. Most of the superior metals were used when it came to the production of weapons or tools used for agriculture. During early Song dynasty imperial armaments manufactured 16.5 million iron arrowheads a year. Bridges and pagodas were also constructed with the use of metallurgy to create the superior grade iron and steel used to make these constructions possible at this time. Just like with the porcelain technology, metallurgical styles were transferred to others such as nomadic peoples. The nomadic people then in turn, used the techniques to create their own advanced weapons to use against China. During the tang dynasty, Daoist alchemists discovered how to make gunpowder while testing many different concoctions while looking for elixirs to prolong life. Alchemists singed beards and even destroyed buildings with the volatile compound, the mix of charcoal, saltpeter, sulphur, and arsenic. However, military officials sought opportunity in the highly dangerous mixture. Eventually they were using gunpowder in bamboo as a kind of make-shift flamethrower. The earliest
