Beating the Grass Valley and Beating the Standing Valley

Beating the Grass Valley and Beating the Standing Valley name a reciprocal system of cross-border raiding that makes civilian seizure part of the military economy of the Liao–Song frontier. Xiao Feng encounters its consequences directly when Liao troops bring Song captives to him as spoils; his decision to free them turns the custom from an abstract practice into a test of loyalty, power, and shared humanity.

The Raiding Cycle

Liao does not provide its troops with rations or salaries, leaving them to obtain their needs by raiding neighboring peoples. The practice, called Beating the Grass Valley, sends Liao forces into Great Song, Western Xia, Jurchen, Korea, and other surrounding lands to seize provisions and civilians. The account calls these expeditions little different from ordinary robbery: military need does not alter what the raids mean to the people whose homes and livelihoods are exposed to them.

Retaliation completes the cycle. Song forces raid Liao territory in response, in what is called Beating the Standing Valley. The names distinguish the sides’ actions, but the consequences converge: border residents live under recurring threat and cannot know whether they will survive until the next day. The practice therefore describes more than isolated military incursions. It is an ongoing pattern in which one side’s raid supplies the rationale for the other’s, while civilians bear the repeated costs.

A Frontier of Competing Affiliations

Xiao Feng’s position makes the cycle especially difficult to regard as someone else’s problem. He was raised in southern Song and speaks its language, but has learned that he is Khitan and now serves Liao. At Yanmen Gate he had seen Song soldiers capture Khitan civilians; in Liao territory he now sees Liao soldiers capture Song civilians. The reversal confronts him with the same civilian vulnerability on both sides of the border.

His earlier dealings with the Jurchen further complicate any simple division between hostile peoples. Although the Jurchen and Khitan are at war, the Jurchen chief HeLiBu’s son AguDa praises Xiao Feng, and the tribesmen welcome him as an honored guest despite his Khitan identity. Their admiration for a good hero crosses the political divide even as armed groups elsewhere attack one another. The narrative thus places personal recognition alongside the larger machinery of raids and warfare, without suggesting that goodwill alone ends the conflict.

The Captives at Nanjing

After Xiao Feng becomes Lord of Southern Chancellery, a Liao unit returns from a raid near Zhuozhou with hundreds of Song captives, mostly young women, as well as captured goods. The troop captain presents the captives and valuables to Xiao Feng as offerings to his new authority. For Xiao Feng, the scene recalls the earlier sight of Song forces taking Khitan civilians: the victims’ misery is no different simply because the uniforms and imperial allegiance have changed.

A captured young woman tells him that she is from Zhang Village and asks to be released so she can return to her parents. Hundreds of captives kneel with her, while one young man remains standing and claims to have an important secret to disclose privately. The contrast marks the captives not as an undifferentiated prize but as people with homes, families, and individual circumstances. When the captain explains that his troops had previously raided nearby areas for supplies, Xiao Feng understands that the new Liao presence has only shifted the immediate danger elsewhere, not erased the practice.

Refusal and Release

The captain’s account of earlier raids prompts Xiao Feng to imagine how captives might be treated by a former Prince of Chu, including being used as targets. This report sharpens the stakes of his response: accepting the captives as spoils would make his office part of the system he already considers cruel and immoral. He has taken the post out of regard for YeLu HongJi and does not intend to remain an official indefinitely, but the suffering before him demands action in the present.

Xiao Feng tells the captives to run and advises them to move away from the border so that they will not be seized again. They hesitate, uncertain whether the order is a trap, until he reassures them. They then understand that they are being released and thank him, knowing that poor captives without gold or silk generally have little hope of buying their freedom. His intervention rescues this group, but he warns that he may not be able to protect them next time. The ending therefore offers relief without pretending that one act can dismantle the recurring cycle.

Significance

Xiao Feng’s reflection rejects the logic by which each side names the other with contempt while treating its own raids as justified retaliation. He asks why people who speak different languages, eat different foods, or belong to different peoples must be distinguished in this way, when all are human. His release of the Song captives gives that reflection practical force: rather than let imperial identity dictate who deserves protection, he acts on the shared vulnerability he recognizes in them.

The episode also distinguishes the power of office from the responsibilities that come with it. Xiao Feng is newly positioned within the Liao administration, and the soldiers expect him to accept their spoils; instead, he uses his authority to interrupt one raid’s immediate consequences. The larger frontier system remains in place, its pressures rooted in military provisioning and reciprocal retaliation, but the captives’ release makes clear that participation is still a choice. For Xiao Feng, the border is at once a political divide and a place where the suffering on either side reveals how unstable that divide is.