Zhao Kuangyin was born in a military family. In the later Han Dynasty, he went to Guo Wei, the special envoy of the Tang Dynasty, and became a soldier. In the first year of Guang Shun (95 1), Guo Wei proclaimed himself emperor. After the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty, Zhao Kuangyin was appointed as the head of the East-West Class, and was worshipped as the deputy governor of the Sliding State. In the third year (953), Guo Wei's adopted son, Chai Rong (later), became an official of Kaifeng Prefecture, following the Northern Han Dynasty and Southern Tang Dynasty with outstanding achievements. When Chai Rong was seriously ill, he was promoted to the general commander of the Imperial Army. In the seventh year of Xiande (960), he was ordered to resist the Northern Han and Qidan allied forces. Then he proclaimed himself emperor in the "Chen Qiao mutiny" and returned to Beijing to persecute Emperor Gong of the Later Zhou Dynasty. In the same year, he ascended the throne as emperor, renamed it "Song", which was called the Northern Song Dynasty in history.
During the reign of Zhao Kuangyin, according to Prime Minister Zhao Pu's strategy of "south first, north first, easy first and then difficult", the separatist regimes of Jingnan, Wuping, Houshu, Nanhan and Nantang were successively destroyed, and most parts of the country were unified. Through "relieving the soldiers with a glass of wine" twice, the military power of the forbidden generals and local buffer towns was removed, the centralization was strengthened, and the situation that local foot soldiers were self-sufficient since the middle of the Tang Dynasty was solved. Politically, strengthen centralization, economically harness the Yellow River, attach importance to agricultural production, reduce corvee, and collect taxes exclusively. Militarily, the military system has been reformed, the navy has been trained, and border commanders have been set up separately.
In the ninth year of Kaibao (976), Zhao Kuangyin died at the age of 50. He reigned in 16 and was buried in Yongchang Mausoleum (now gongyi city, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province), the emperor of the Ming Dynasty.