Liqian (simplified Chinese: 骊靬; traditional Chinese: 驪靬; pinyin: Líqián; Wade–Giles: Li-ch'ien)[note 1] was a county established during the Western Han dynasty and located in the south of modern Yongchang County, Jinchang, in Gansu province of Northwest China.
[2] There is a theory that some of the modern-day residents of Zhelaizhai (now Liqian village,[3] in Jiaojiazhuang township)[4] are descendants of a group of Roman soldiers that were never accounted for after being captured in the Battle of Carrhae.
Until the 1st century BC, it belonged to Fanhe county (番和縣; Fānhé xiàn), Zhangye prefecture (張掖郡; Zhāngyè jùn).
[11] In the 1940s, Homer H. Dubs, a professor of Chinese history at the University of Oxford, suggested that the people of Liqian were descended from Roman legionaries taken prisoner at the Battle of Carrhae.
These prisoners, Dubs proposed, were resettled by the victorious Parthians on their eastern border and may have fought as mercenaries at the Battle of Zhizhi, between the Chinese and the Xiongnu in 36 BC.