Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Tang dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard it as a high point of Chinese civilisation and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.
The Tang dynasty was founded by Li Yuan, known as Emperor Gaozu, who declared himself emperor in 618 after the murder of Emperor Yang of Sui. He had been Duke of Tang and governor of Taiyuan, and rose in rebellion in 617 alongside his son Li Shimin and his daughter Princess Pingyang.
Wu Zetian entered Emperor Gaozong's court as a lowly consort and became the only legitimate female emperor in Chinese history. She proclaimed her own Wu Zhou dynasty on the 16th of October 690, and a palace coup forced her out in 705, restoring the Tang on the 3rd of March.
The An Lushan rebellion was an uprising from 755 to 763 led by An Lushan, a half-Sogdian, half-Turkic Tang commander who rebelled with an army of more than 100,000 troops. It destroyed the dynasty's prosperity, forced the court to flee Chang'an, and led to a permanent decline of central authority.
Over 48,900 Tang poems by more than 2,200 authors survive today, and poetry composition was required study for the imperial examinations. The age produced Li Bai, who lived from 701 to 762, and Du Fu, who lived from 712 to 770, along with poets such as Wang Wei.
The Tang dynasty ended in 907 when Zhu Wen, a former salt smuggler turned military governor, deposed Emperor Ai and took the throne as Emperor Taizu of Later Liang. This followed the devastating Huang Chao rebellion of 874 to 884 and began the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
Chang'an, present-day Xi'an, was the Tang capital and the world's most populous city for much of the dynasty, with a population reaching two million including its suburbs. It was laid out in a checkerboard of 108 walled wards and housed about 25,000 foreigners practising religions including Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism.