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Kublai Khan declared the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty in [[1271]], establishing a new capital at Dadu (大都, lit. "Great Capital"; this city would later become [[Beijing]]). He would spend the next eight years completing his conquest of China, capturing the Southern Song capital of [[Hangzhou]] in [[1276]]. The Empress Dowager Xie and the child emperor, [[Emperor Gong of Song]], were escorted to Dadu, where they were treated with honors. Meanwhile, the Song dynasty continued briefly with a succession of two emperors reigning in exile, before they too were killed and the Song Dynasty came to its ultimate end in [[1279]].
Kublai Khan declared the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty in [[1271]], establishing a new capital at Dadu (大都, lit. "Great Capital"; this city would later become [[Beijing]]). He would spend the next eight years completing his conquest of China, capturing the Southern Song capital of [[Hangzhou]] in [[1276]]. The Empress Dowager Xie and the child emperor, [[Emperor Gong of Song]], were escorted to Dadu, where they were treated with honors. Meanwhile, the Song dynasty continued briefly with a succession of two emperors reigning in exile, before they too were killed and the Song Dynasty came to its ultimate end in [[1279]].
The Yuan thus became the first non-[[Han Chinese]] dynasty to rule all of [[China proper]]. It was also the first to not have a uniform legal code to apply to all subjects, as Kublai Khan carefully balanced his adoption of Chinese practices with maintenance of Mongol ones. He lived in a permanent capital, rather than in a nomadic collection of yurts, and took a Chinese posthumous imperial name, Shizu, retroactively naming his grandfather Emperor Taizu of Yuan, and [[Ogodei Khan]] Emperor Taizong of Yuan. Kublai Khan's law codes separated Mongols and Chinese, banning their intermarriage, restricting their interactions, and holding them to different law codes.<ref>Conrad Schirokauer, et al, ''A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations'', Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning (2012), 225.</ref>
==Mongol Invasions of Japan==
==Mongol Invasions of Japan==