Reflections | Cathay Pacific’s link to once powerful people of northern China – how the mighty have fallen
The Liao dynasty was ruled by the Khitan people, a great and mighty nomadic group whose name was passed on to medieval Europe as Cathay
Given that I am based in southern China, I often avail myself of the services of Cathay Pacific Airways to, well, “move beyond”. The choice is made more by default rather than preference. Cathay Pacific is a fairly good airline that doesn’t stand out in any particular way in terms of service or comfort, but it does offer the greatest connectivity to other parts of the world.
Although a household name in Hong Kong, the collocation of the two words “Cathay” and “Pacific” is rather incongruous if one delves into the origins of the word “Cathay”, an old English name for China. It originates from the word “Khitan”, the name of a seminomadic people infamous in Chinese history for their warlike savagery, a people for whom the word “Pacific” is patently ill-suited.
The Khitan regarded the Liao River, in the present-day province of Liaoning, as their ancestral homeland. They are mentioned in early Chinese records but it was in 916, when their leader, Yelü Abaoji, crushed his foes and unified the tribes of his people, that the Khitan people rose to prominence. In that year, Yelü Abaoji declared himself emperor of the Great State of Khitan.
Subsequently, the Khitan state, also known as the Liao dynasty, expanded its territories by waging war on its neighbours. The Khitan were feared, especially among the Chinese to the south, for their ferocity on the battlefield and their cruelty as captors. Their repeated raids on Chinese civilians across the border, and the carnage that they caused, also made them a hated enemy nation.
One can therefore imagine the shame suffered by the Chinese in 936, when their ruler, the Later Jin dynasty’s Emperor Gaozu, ceded a large swathe of land in northern China known as the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun to the Khitan, and worse, debased the entire Chinese nation by referring to himself as “son-emperor” vis-à-vis his “father-emperor”, Yelü Deguang, the son and successor of Abaoji.
