General info about chinese dynasties:
http://www.crystalinks.com/chinadynasties.html
Info on the Zhou:
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/ancient_china/zhou.html
The Zhou began as a semi-nomadic tribe that lived to the west of the Shang kingdom. Due to their nomadic ways, they learned how to work with people of different cultures. After a time, they settled in the Wei River valley, where they became vassals of the Shang. The Zhou eventually became stronger than the Shang, and in about 1040 B.C. they defeated the Shang in warfare. They built their capital in Xi'an. Part of their success was the result of gaining the allegiance of disaffected city-states. The Shang were also weakened due to their constant warfare with people to the north.
Info on the Sung:
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/ChinaHistory/SUNG.HTM
The military governors who brought down the T'ang founded five short-lived regimes, which, in turn, were replaced by a new age of prosperity under the Sung (960-1279), the beginning of China's early modern age. Although never so militarily powe rful as the Han or T'ang, the Sung is nevertheless notable for establishing political, social, economic, and cultural patterns that remained largely unaltered in China for a millennium. The Sung saw the final demise of the old aristocratic domination of government. Replacing the old aristocrats was a new group, the scholar-gentry class, whose power came from landholding and long years of educational training. Agriculture benefited by the introduction of new, early-ripening strains of rice, and enormous advances were made in commerce. Cities based on trade and industry multiplied rapidly, especially along the southeastern coast and in the Yangtze River valley. Many of the Chinese arts, such as storytelling, drama, and vernacular fiction, became increas ingly oriented toward the urban classes. Chinese landscape painting reached its full maturity. A new form of Confucianism, a syncretism of Confucian ethics and Buddhist metaphysics called neo-Confucianism, became state orthodoxy, a policy that persisted until the 20th century. Not everyone benefited, however. The peasants fell ever deeper into tenantry, and the status of women declined. The latter was symbolized by the growth of concubinage and the introduction of Foot-Binding.
