Shawn Liao - Family History

Family History

Liao's grandfather, Liao Zhong-Mai (1912–1975), who was educated in Japan and a sugarcane tycoon, became one of the first legislators in China to be elected without the backing of the Communist Party or the Nationalist Party, a position he held for a record six consecutive legislative terms. Considered the patriarch of the Liao clan in southern China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, he was lionized as a daring independent politician and a revolutionary political voice during China's various experimental phases with grassroots democracy in the turbulent era of the 1940s through 1960's.

Liao is a descendant of a direct line of ancestry from the Zhang-Zhou Prefecture in Fujian Province. The official record placed a man bearing a surname, Zhang, as the first generation of this lineage. Record shows that on or about the 1360s (the period between the Yuan Dynasty, 1271–1368, and the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644), Zhang Yuan-Zi, a scholar from a family of limited means, was solicited (married into the family) to become a husband to the only daughter of a wealthy Liao family. The couple only gave birth to one son. Soon after, an agreement was struck between the two families, Zhang and Liao, that all future generations to follow must "live on earth as Liao, and rest in eternity as Zhang." This pact, in effect, was meant to preserve the legacy of the Liao family, while never forget the hereditary origin of the founding Zhang patriarch.

Liao is the 21st generation of the Zhang-Liao lineage. Just like all of his foregathers, he will one day revert to the full name of "Zhang Shixiang" or "Shih-Siang Shawn Zhang."