Liao’s Banquet

During Liao dynasty, there are several of banquet on government affair or daily life, up to the imperial bureaucracy, down to the ordinary people. They also set up rules to guard the activities.And a wide rang of banquet, held by emperor is as the most representative. Some of them have much political character, of which held for the purpose of celebrating hurting or festival, meeting the need of Emperor’s hobby, awarding military exploit, receiving foreign guests or winning over imperial clansmen. All these activities play a positive role in domination.The classes of bureaucrat also hold banquet to entertain emperor and the feast among scholars, ambassador from Song dynasty.The activities in ordinary people are worth to pay attention to. They not that grand like the upper class’s, but still plentiful in content, and are common to be seen during festival, wedding, funeral and other important moments in one person’s life.The etiquette of Central plains has influence on the banquet of Liao Dynasty to some extent. In order to strengthen stratum, system and etiquette are codified in a very tedious way on seating arrangement, making a toast, music and so on. The awareness of monarch is worshipful and official low status can be reflected anywhere. The banquets of Liao Dynasty develop its characteristic on the basic of the unique historical background. Comparing with the previous regimes that established by minority, the type of activities in Liao Dynasty is ampler, the system of etiquette is complete, and the scenes is greater, which shows a wild life style of north horde and culture fusion.It also affects the way of people’s life, promoting economy especially the brewing industry, creating more chances to communicate among different nations and different regimes.