Liu Su, a son of the famous historian Liu Zhiji (661-721), was active as an official and court historian in the mid-eighth century. Of his various writings, only the Sui-Tang jiahua, a collection of anecdotes about personages of the Sui and Tang periods, has survived. The anecdote below is about a child prodigy named Jia Jiayin, and shows that even powerful Chinese people with facial features that resembled the Hu could become the butt of jokes.

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During the Zhenguan era (627-649), when [Jia Jiayin] was eleven to twelve years old, he was recommended to the imperial court. Although he was skilled in debating, his facial features were ugly. Once, he was at the imperial court awaiting the emperor’s decree. When the court session ended and the ministers came out of the audience hall, they all gathered to look at him. Before anyone else could speak, Xu Ji, the Duke of Ying¹, said to the other ministers, “This boy has a face like a Lao², so how could he be clever?” The others had not yet responded when Jia Jiayin himself replied, “If a Hu-headed man can be a chief minister, why can’t a Lao-faced boy be clever?” All the courtiers burst out laughing. This was because Xu Ji had a Hu-like face.
 

1. Xu Ji was also known as Xu Shiji or Li Shiji. He was one of the early Tang’s most successful generals and went on to serve as a chief minister. ↩︎
2. During the early medieval and Sui-Tang periods, “Lao” 獠 was a label applied by the Chinese to upland indigenous peoples of Sichuan and Guangxi (see source 5.5 and source 5.6). They were apparently stereotyped as ugly savages. ↩︎