Having their origin in the Qiang of west China and the Man of south China, the Liao inhabit mostly in the Sichuan region. But the unique feature of this people lies in the fact that they are also found in the Hubei Province, the habitat of the Man, ...
Having their origin in the Qiang of west China and the Man of south China, the Liao inhabit mostly in the Sichuan region. But the unique feature of this people lies in the fact that they are also found in the Hubei Province, the habitat of the Man, and the Guangdong Province, that of the Li . In order to illuminate the characteristics of this people, I have examined the changes over time in their regional distribution, regional and temporal difference in their activities according to the different family names they assumed, and the characteristics of each group of varying family names. I focused my attention particularly on the occasions on which the term Liao appeared combined together with the Man and the Li like "Manliao " or "Liliao " and tried to understand the meaning of such expressions. In addition, I also aimed to demonstrate the meaning of the term "Yiliao ", which began to appear a bit later than "Manliao" and "Liliao" since the Six dynasties and was widely found in the Tang sources.
Through my research, I have discovered that the Liao came to be identified as a new ethnic group, when the Qiang, who used to live in the southwest of the Sichuan Province, migrated to the Shu region and became intermingled there with the southern Man of the Han dynasty, moving up from the south. Their experience of ethnic migration was the same as that of the Man and the Li. They were different from the other two groups, however, in that they became mixed with other ethnic groups and came to be identified as a new ethnicity. The unique feature in their great territorial mobility is that they expanded their habitat moving eastward via various routes in the political turmoil of the Six Dynasties: some found their way to the Hubei region through the Hanzhong basin; others, moving further east crossing the Three gorges, clashed with and sometimes were intermingled with the Man, who were scattered through this region; some of them moved again down to the Guangdong region. By the end of the Six Dynasties the Li and the Liao were found, mixed together, in the Guangdong Province and in the northern part of today's Vietnam.
In this sense, we can say that the ethnic identity of the Liao was weaker than that of the Man or the Li. For this reason, they often appeared in the sources as "Yiliao " from the Six Dynasties through the Tang. It is interesting to note that by the end of the Tang the term "Yiliao" came to be used as a generic name for the southern ethnic minorities. Moreover, "Liao"continued to appear in the Song-Yuan sources whereas "Man" and "Li" lost their meaning as the name of specific ethnic groups by the end of the Tang. This strong continuity and persistence of the term "Liao"does not mean, however, that the ethnic identity of the Liao was preserved intact. Today, many of the southern ethnic minorities, whose identities were formed in the Ming, claim their origins in the Liao. It is precisely because the term "Liao" indicated rather porous, vague ethnic identity and covered broad categories.