In 1018, a princess of China’s Liao Dynasty (916-1125) died, at the tender age of 18, and was laid to rest beside her husband, almost 20 years her senior who died the previous year, barely two years into their marriage. 

There they lay undisturbed for nearly a millennium in a corner of the modern-day Inner Mongolia autonomous region in North China. 

When their resting place was finally discovered by archaeologists in 1986, the couple, both among the highest nobility of Liao’s ruling class, proved their capacity to dazzle, with everything that glittered, including two gold masks covering their faces.

Today, one of the masks, as worn by the princess, is on view at the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou city, East China’s Jiangsu province, in an exhibition titled La Bella in the Northern Land. “These were no average beauties, but princesses and royal consorts whose elevated status meant much more than a luxurious lifestyle,” says Xu Xincheng, the exhibition’s curator. 

With more than 100 exhibits, all from the Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Xu intends to tell — to use his own words — “the little-known stories of these noble women, almost all of whom had a role to play in the support and continuation of a political alliance lying at the heart of Liao’s imperial rule”.

That alliance can be traced back to the very beginning of the Liao Dynasty, whose first emperor Yelyu Abaoji received crucial backing from his equally ambitious wife, Shulyu Ping, and her family. The latter group later adopted the surname Xiao, modeling themselves on Xiao He, the right-hand man of Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) in whom Abaoji saw himself.

“Ever since then, all of the Liao empresses — main wife to the Liao emperors — were surnamed Xiao with only one notable exception. In fact, it’s not exaggerating to say that almost every Yelyu had married a Xiao, and vice versa. The resulting familial relations could be absolutely daunting from a modern perspective,” says Xu, referring to the marriage between the princess whose paternal grandfather was the fifth emperor of Liao, and her husband, Xiao Shaoju, who was also the princess’ maternal uncle. 

Few aristocratic ladies would treat matters of beauty casually, certainly not the show’s protagonists. From the tomb of the princess — more commonly known as the Princess of the State (fiefdom) of Chen — came a dragon-embossed gilt silver makeup case which, upon its discovery, yielded several smaller silver cases, some tainted with residues of face powder and blush. Similar items, decorated with dragon, phoenix and lion patterns, have been found from the tomb — also located in Inner Mongolia — of a lady whom some researchers suggest was a sister of Abaoji, a member of the nomadic Khitan people.

“Gold and silver wares, thanks partly to their portability, featured prominently in the aristocratic life of the Liao society, as it did with other nomadic groups, the ancient Turkic people for example,” says Gai Zhiyong, deputy director of the Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region who’s closely involved in the excavation of several prominent Liao tombs. 

In that respect, Liao had come under the direct influence of the once-powerful Tang Dynasty (618-907), which in 648 made the traditional Khitan land its protectorate. When the fortunes of Tang started to wane, Abaoji, who had united the various Khitan tribes, rose to seize the opportunity, establishing the rule of Liao in 916. 

“One of the things Liao had inherited from Tang was the gold and silver making tradition which, thanks to the flourishing of the Ancient Silk Road trade during the Tang time, had come to bear multiple stylistic imprints ranging from Chinese to Sogdian and Sassanian,” says Gai.

However, according to Xu, “it was the spirit of internationalism that must have counted as Tang’s single most important bequest to Liao”.

Pointing to all the agate bracelets, amber necklaces as well as crystal and glass ware that are on view at the exhibition, the curator says: “Some of them may have come from the Baltic Sea region, the Middle East or the Byzantine Empire. Many of these exchanges were conducted along what’s known today as the Steppe Silk Road which, extending westward across the Eurasian Steppe, linked Liao with other cultures along the way.” 

The same hybridity could be found in the spiritual realm. While the gilt silver crown that had accompanied the Princess of the State of Chen in death features a Taoist deity on top, the pair of turquoise-embedded gold earrings from that suspected sister of Abaoji were Makara-shaped. Makara is a dragon-headed, fish-bodied mythical animal first introduced into China along with Buddhism. The latter was also believed to be a female shaman, her identity indicated by, among other things, her gold headband that was typically worn by Liao shaman priests. 

When discussing the final resting place for the Princess of the State of Chen and her husband, Linda Cooke Johnson, the professor of history at Michigan State University, wrote in her book that “the princess and her consort were dressed and equipped to mount their steeds and ride off across the steppes of their fiefdom.”

Found in their burial chamber were almost everything the couple might need for a pastoral life, including gilt silver boots worn that resembled “modern Western riding boots” to quote Johnson, as well as various horse gear — gilt copper chest traps, bridles and stirrups for example. There’s even a copper burning mirror for starting a fire, and a jade arm shield on which a hunting eagle could alight every time it returned to its master.

“The Liao people lived on horseback, even empresses and royal concubines were accomplished archers and riders who followed their husbands in military campaigns as well as leisure hunting trips,” says the exhibition’s curator Xu Xincheng, quoting Liaoshi, or The Annals of Liao, compiled during the mid-14th century.

Playing an indispensable role in her husband’s highly controversial ascendance to power, Shulyu Ping, the founding empress of Liao, had almost never failed to deliver fatal blows to her foes, on and off the battleground. 

Her remarkable military skills and political maneuvering were passed on to future imperial wives of Liao, most notably her own great-granddaughter Xiao Chuo, who was in turn the paternal grandmother of the Princess of State of Chen. Wife to the fifth emperor of Liao, Xiao Chuo acted as the powerful regent for her teenage emperor son upon the death of her husband, and effectively presided over the Liao court for 27 years until her own passing in 1009. 

Equally celebrated as a warrior and a peacemaker, Xiao commanded armies during Liao’s prolonged war with its neighbor, the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), before allowing a peace treaty to be signed that ushered in approximately a century of relative peace for the two major powers.  

On the whole, gender division was less closely observed in the Liao society than it was in Northern Song, dominated by the Han Chinese. 

However, strong elements of the Han Chinese culture did make their way into the life of Khitans, giving rise to, among other things, a tendency to “link education with (feminine) virtue” to quote Johnson, who studied the epitaphs of Liao women. 

On display at the Suzhou Museum exhibition are a beautifully carved jade water container and a jade ink-stone, items typically belonging to the study of a Han Chinese scholar. Both were from the burial chamber of the princess and her husband. 

In 1974, a Liao Dynasty tomb was discovered in the town of Yemaotai in Northeast China’s Liaoning province. The deceased — an elderly woman — was dressed in Khitan style with gilt silver riding boots on her feet and horse equipment stored in one of the side chambers. However, the piles of scroll books lining the tomb’s interior walls and the two exceptionally well-preserved hanging scroll paintings that had been rolled up and placed in her coffin left little doubt as to the seriousness of her engagement with classical Chinese culture. 

Sharing the same stone funerary bed with her husband, the Princess of the State of Chen had a miscellany of things dangling from her waist. These included, apart from jade and amber pendants, a cylindrical gold sewing case for needles, and a gold pouch whose openwork design was possibly influenced by the Northern Song style. 

There was also a pair of small gold cases with attaching chains. “These could be face powder containers, allowing the princess to give her makeup a few touch-ups without having to get off the saddle,” says Xu. 

In her stone-inscribed epitaph, the highborn princess, who died at 18, was said to have carried herself with a combination of dignity and humbleness. “She adhered reverently to feminine virtues”, read the epitaph, the words reminiscent of Confucian teachings. Yet as a child, she was “smart and skilled in argument”. 

“The end comes to all, but for the princess, it has arrived a little too soon,” the final sentence of the epitaph went.

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