<P> Women wore long dresses, blouses that came down to the knee, skirts and jackets with long or short sleeves, while women from wealthy families could wear purple scarves around their shoulders . The main difference in women's apparel from that of men was that it was fastened on the left, not on the right . </P> <P> The main food staples in the diet of the lower classes remained rice, pork, and salted fish . Song restaurant and tavern menus are recorded which list entrées for feasts, banquets, festivals, and carnivals . They reveal a diverse and lavish diet for those of the upper class . They could choose from a wide variety of meats and seafood, including shrimp, geese, duck, mussel, shellfish, fallow deer, hare, partridge, pheasant, francolin, quail, fox, badger, clam, crab, and many others . Dairy products were rare in Chinese cuisine at this time . Beef was rarely consumed since the bull was a valuable draft animal, and dog meat was absent from the diet of the wealthy, although the poor could choose to eat dog meat if necessary (yet it was not part of their regular diet). People also consumed dates, raisins, jujubes, pears, plums, apricots, pear juice, lychee - fruit juice, honey and ginger drinks, pawpaw juice, spices and seasonings of Sichuan pepper, ginger, soy sauce, oil, sesame oil, salt, and vinegar . </P> <P> The Song dynasty had one of the most prosperous and advanced economies in the medieval world . Song Chinese invested their funds in joint stock companies and in multiple sailing vessels at a time when monetary gain was assured from the vigorous overseas trade and domestic trade along the Grand Canal and Yangtze River . Prominent merchant families and private businesses were allowed to occupy industries that were not already government - operated monopolies . Both private and government - controlled industries met the needs of a growing Chinese population in the Song . Artisans and merchants formed guilds that the state had to deal with when assessing taxes, requisitioning goods, and setting standard workers' wages and prices on goods . </P> <P> The iron industry was pursued by both private entrepreneurs who owned their own smelters as well as government - supervised smelting facilities . The Song economy was stable enough to produce over a hundred million kilograms (over two hundred million pounds) of iron product a year . Large - scale deforestation in China would have continued if not for the 11th - century innovation of the use of coal instead of charcoal in blast furnaces for smelting cast iron . Much of this iron was reserved for military use in crafting weapons and armouring troops, but some was used to fashion the many iron products needed to fill the demands of the growing domestic market . The iron trade within China was advanced by the construction of new canals, facilitating the flow of iron products from production centres to the large market in the capital city . </P>

During the song dynasty the social basis for the government bureaucracy was triangular consisting of