liao

Updated: May 13, 2025

This name, too, had associations with the old Hun tradition; it recalled the state of Ho-lien P'o-p'o in the early fifth century. The state soon covered the present province of Kansu, small parts of the adjoining Tibetan territory, and parts of the Ordos region. It attacked the province of Shensi, but the Chinese and the Liao attached the greatest importance to that territory.

Wolfram Eberhard - A History of China

The most probable theory is that held by Japanese strategists, namely, that he desired to find some opening for the vigorous campaign which he intended to pursue in the spring, and that his attention was naturally directed to the region between the Hun and the Liao rivers, a region unoccupied by either army and yet within striking distance of the bases of both.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

In 1125, when the Tungusic Juchên destroyed the Liao, the Hsia also lost large territories in the east of their country, especially the province of Shensi, which they had conquered; but they were still able to hold their own. Their political importance to China, however, vanished, since they were now divided from southern China and as partners were no longer of the same value to it.

Wolfram Eberhard - A History of China

Then "under cover of the smoke and heat generated by the conflict of the other armies on an immense front, and specially screened by the violent activity of the Second Army, Nogi marched in echelon of columns from the west on a wide, circling movement; swept up the Liao valley, and bending thence eastward, descended on Mukden from the west and northwest, giving the finishing blow of this gigantic encounter; severing the enemy's main line of retreat, and forcing him to choose between surrender and flight.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Now every rifle near by suddenly was stilled, and a Chinese stretcher-party behind me murmured, "Ta ping lai tao liao" "the armies arrived." Somebody took this up, and then we began shouting it across in Chinese to our enemy, shouting it louder and louder in a sort of ecstasy, and heaving heavy stones to attract their attention.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation

"So amiably impressed with this ingenious scheme was Ah-Ping that he would at once have entered more fully into the detail had the thought not arisen in his mind that the person before him was the father of Liao, who urgently required a certain large sum, and that for this reason he might with prudence inquire more fully into the matter elsewhere, in case Quen himself should have been imperceptibly led aside, even though he possessed intentions of a most unswerving honourableness.

Ernest Bramah - The Wallet of Kai Lung

When time for the second funeral, the tiwah, came round another slave was killed and his head hung near by. They are his attendants in the next life, but many more and elaborate arrangements are necessary to satisfy the demands of the liao, and they must be fully complied with on the celebration of the tiwah, the most elaborate of all feasts in Borneo.

Carl Lumholtz - Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917