Campaigners › Frontier Generals
Yang Yanzhao
Northern Song general, son of Yang Ye, who held Suicheng against the Khitan in 999 by freezing its walls with water and guarded the Hebei frontier for over twenty years
On a desert ridge, a rammed-earth watchtower and a long wall run across sand and rock toward the distance; a sentry stands on the tower with his back turned, smoke rises from a far beacon tower, and a small camel caravan crosses the sand at the right.
Also known as Yang Yanlang · Yang Liulang · Yang Liu
Yang Yanzhao, first named Yanlang, was a son of Yang Ye, who said the boy took after him and brought him on every campaign. In the northern offensive of 986 he led the vanguard and kept directing the attack on Shuozhou though an arrow had pierced his arm. In the winter of 999 a large Khitan army fell on Suicheng, a small and unprepared town; he armed the townsmen and, in the bitter cold, had water poured over the ramparts so that by morning they were sheathed in ice too slick to climb, and the attackers withdrew. He later governed Baozhou as border inspector and served as deputy commander at Gaoyangguan, holding the Hebei frontier against the Khitan for more than twenty years. He died in 1014 at fifty-seven; Emperor Zhenzong sent officers to escort his coffin home, and many people along the northern frontier wept as it passed. Later fiction and drama made him Yang the Sixth Son, a central figure of the Yang family generals cycle.
Life and times
Dates 958 CE–1014 CE