Introduction: problems with approaches to the Tang-Song transition -- Part I. Borders, boundaries, and frontier crossers: concepts and background -- You can't get there from here: rethinking categories -- Fed or dead: notions and uses of loyalty (zhong) -- Crossing boundaries and shifting borders: the first-generation Liao southerners -- Part II. Working for the Liao: life stories -- Loyalties in the borderlands: the founder and the Confucian -- An emerging boundary: two approaches to serving the Liao -- Drawing the line: redefinitions of loyalty -- Conclusion: locating borders: then, now, and in between -- Appendix: frontier crossings
