Liao masks offer rare peek into life of Qidan people

Editor's Note: Every week we look at a work of art or a cultural relic that puts the spotlight on China's heritage.

The Qidan, also called Khitan, were an ethnic group who inhabited the broad grasslands of North China more than 1,000 years ago.

They built the empire of the Liao Dynasty ((907-1125) in East Asia that ruled over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China.