Liáng

The Liáng culture belongs to the oases of the Hexi Corridor in present-day Gansu, known in imperial times as Liangzhou. Han armies conquered the corridor in the 120s BCE and opened the Silk Road, and in the Sixteen Kingdoms era a succession of states named Liang ruled these oases between the steppe and the Tibetan plateau.

In 1370 and 1372 the newly founded Ming dynasty seized the corridor from the Mongols and built Jiayu Pass at its western end; after the pass was closed in 1524 and the Great Wall was rebuilt through Gansu from 1539 to 1541, Liangzhou became a heavily garrisoned frontier.

Qing forces took it from the short-lived Shun dynasty in 1645, and a Muslim revolt led by Milayin held Ganzhou and Suzhou against them until 1649. Soldier-farmers settled in large numbers in the 1720s to guard against the Dzungars, and by the 1750s Hexi millet and wheat were shipped across the empire to relieve famines.