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The economy of the Han Dynasty of ancient China reflects a period of fluctuation between periods of economic prosperity and decline. Major features of the Han economy were population growth, increasing urbanization, unprecedented growth of industry and trade and government experimentation with nationalization. In this era, the levels of minting and circulation of coin currency grew significantly, forming the foundation of a stable monetary system. The Silk Road facilitated the establishment of trade and tributary exchanges with foreign countries across Eurasia, many of which were previously unknown to the people of ancient China. The imperial capitals of both Western-Han (Chang'an), and of Eastern-Han (Luoyang), were among the largest cities in the world at the time, in both population and area. Here, government workshops manufactured furnishings for the palaces of the emperor and produced goods for the common people. The government oversaw the construction of roads and bridges, which facilitated official government business and encouraged commercial growth. Under Han rule, industrialists, wholesalers and merchants—from minor shopkeepers to wealthy businessmen—could engage in a wide range of enterprises and trade in the domestic, public, and even military spheres. Autumn in Beihai Park, Beijing. Diagram of bracket and cantilever arms from the building manual Yingzao Fashi (published in 1103) of the Song Dynasty ...that zaojing, an elaborately ornamented wooden ceiling, shaped like a well and often painted with water plants, was believed by the ancient Chinese to prevent wooden buildings from burning? ...that the first medical missions in China began in part because the missionary Robert Morrison wanted to discover whether the Chinese pharmacopoeia could cure disease in the West? ...that the study of sociology in China was repressed as a bourgeois pseudoscience during the early communist era? Du Fu was a Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. Along with Li Po, he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His own greatest ambition was to help his country by becoming a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like the country, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and the last 15 years of his life were a time of almost constant unrest. Initially unpopular, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese poetry. He has been called "poet historian" and "poet sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire". What are portals? List of portals Featured portals