"Self-portrait" of Jeroboam's eldest son, Jeroboam
Yelü Bei (b. 899 – died 937), the eldest son of the founding emperor of the Liao State, Yelü Abaoji and Empress Shulu, king of the Kingdom of Dongdan, was made crown prince in 916, king of Dongdan in 926, and succeeded to the throne by his second son Yelü Deguang after the death of Taizu Yelü Abaoji in 926. When Jeroboam became emperor, he immediately exercised strict control and surveillance over Jeroboam. In 930, Jeroboam defected to Later Tang in grief. After 936, there was a coup d'état in Tang, in which Yelü Bei was killed and buried in Xianling. In 947, Emperor Taizong of Liao died, and Yelü Be's eldest son, Yelü Nguyen, regained the throne and posthumously honored Yelü Be as Emperor of the Kingdom of Renguo.
First, the exiled prince "Wu Taibo" - maritime poetry
In 930, Yelü Bei crossed the sea from Liaodong to the Later Tang Dynasty with his concubines and rare calligraphy and paintings, and he compared himself to "Wu Taibo". When Jinzhou was about to board the ship, he turned his back on his homeland full of sorrow and indignation, and set up a wooden plaque on the seashore, engraving a "poem on the sea": "The small mountain presses the big mountain, and the big mountain is powerless." Shame on the people of his hometown, and from then on throw himself into a foreign country."
Second, go to other places and not forget your homeland
The Later Tang Emperor Li Siyuan greeted him with the etiquette of the Son of Heaven, gave him the surname of Dongdan and the name muhua, and paid homage to the envoys of the Huaihua Army. Later, he was given the surname Li and the name Li Zanhua, moved to Huazhou (Huaxian County, Henan), and Yaoling Qian prefecture (赣州, Jiangxi) Jiedushi. After 933, Emperor Mingzong of Tang died of illness, and his son Li Conghou was killed by Li Congke, Li Siyuan's adopted son, Less than half a year after he ascended the throne. Yelü Bei thought that this was a good opportunity to attack Later Tang, so he sent someone to secretly report to Emperor Taizong of Liao, hoping to take advantage of the internal unrest in Later Tang to attack Later Tang. Yelü Deguang did personally lead the army south, but he was not invited by Jeroboam, but by Shi Jingyao.
In 936, Li Congke wanted to set himself on fire and summoned Yelü Bei to burn with him, but Yelü Bei refused, and Li Congke sent the powerful soldier Li Yanshen to kill Yelü Bei at the age of 38. Later, his younger brother Emperor Taizong of Liao, Yelü Deguang, reburied Yelü Bei on mount Lu (in present-day Liaoning), his favorite physician, with the posthumous title of "Emperor Wenwu Yuan".
In the first year of Datong (947), Emperor Taizong of Liao died, and Yelü Be's son Yelü Ruan became emperor of the Liao state, posthumously honoring his father as "Emperor of the State of Ren".
Three, genius painters
Yelü Bei is quite talented and ambitious, but unfortunately his ambition is difficult to pay for fleeing for half a lifetime, and he is also a talented painter, and the following is a self-portrait of Yelü Bei during the Tang Dynasty after his exile, which should be very close to his true appearance, from which we can also speculate about the resemblance of the Khitan royal family.
Li Zanhua self-portrait
This is another painting by Jeroboam-Lee Zanhua, "Travels of the King of Dongdan", created in 931 and now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.