Completing our series on the other, lesser-known regimes that coexisted with the Song Dynasty, we look at the Kingdom of Dali located in picturesque Yunnan in China's southwest.

Led by the Duan family for most of its history, Dali was a minor player in East Asian international relations at the time, and the Song was happy to have a harmless and peaceful kingdom to its rear so that it could focus on threats coming from the north.

In the Chinese imagination, though, and for a literary reason, the Duan family of Dali looms larger than you'd expect.

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