Sasha today in its history.
Author: Sasha
This article is Sasha's original and will not be reprinted by any media
Why didn't ancient farmers eat locusts to relieve disasters? On July 29, 243 BC, a locust plague occurred in the Qin kingdom, and there was a great epidemic in the world.
There were many locust plagues in ancient China, so why didn't farmers eat locusts?
According to Deng Yunte's "History of China's Rescue of The Wasteland", the locust plague in the Qin and Han Dynasties averaged once every 8.8 years, the two Song Dynasties were 3.5 years, the Yuan Dynasty was 1.6 years, and the Ming and Qing dynasties were both 2.8 years, and the scope and degree of disasters were the highest in the world.
A plague of locusts is a devastating disaster that will wipe out all crops. When the peasants encountered a plague of locusts, they simply cut off all the harvests.
Today locusts are a delicacy, and the price is quite expensive.
When Sasha went to Shandong as a guest, local friends lit fried locusts.
Friends said that this locust is farmed, and there are no natural locusts in Shandong.
The price of the hotel to buy locusts is very high, and the one that is worse has one or two dollars, and the good one is several pieces. Therefore, the price of this plate of locusts is not low, and generally only guests will be ordered.
So, locusts are so delicious, why didn't the ancients eat locusts to deal with locusts?
Nature has a reason.
First, superstitious thoughts, locusts can not eat.
The ancients were very superstitious, believing that locusts were not simple insects, but a holy relic manipulated by divine power, the so-called locust god.
The reason for the locust plague is that the heavens deliberately brought down the disaster in order to punish the world.
Since they are gods, the common people cannot eat or even kill the locusts, but can only do their best to drive them away.
As long as the morality of kings and common people is improved, the locust plague can naturally be eliminated.
As a result of these superstitious ideas, locust plagues are severe once they occur, because the total number does not decrease. As long as the total number of locusts remains the same, they will continue to migrate around to eat crops.
During the Tang Dynasty Li Shimin period, in order to deal with the locust plague, it was ordered that the locusts could be killed or even eaten.
The common people did not dare to do so, so Li Shimin prayed to heaven and assumed all responsibilities.
The Zhenguan Politician records that in June of the second year of Zhenguan (628), when Gyeonggi was droughting locusts, Tang Taizong threw locusts in the imperial garden to wish the name: "People take the valley as their destiny, the people have had it, and when they give one person, they have a spirit, but when they eat my heart, it is harmless to the people." "If you swallow it, the locusts will not be plagued."
The translation is: Li Shimin said, "The people regard grain as their own life, and you eat it, which is harmful to the people." The people are guilty, all those sins are in me, if you really have a spirit, eat my heart, don't harm the people anymore. "The locusts will be swallowed."
Look, Li Shimin is also fighting.
Second, it is difficult to catch locusts.
As we all know, locusts are flying insects, fast and endurance.
According to scientific studies, locusts can fly for up to 1 to 2 days and can fly more than 150 kilometers at a time.
I would like to ask, how do you kill insects that can fly like this?
In terms of ancient scientific and technological forces, it is impossible to catch many locusts at once.
Even today, the most effective way to deal with locusts is to spray poison with agricultural aircraft.
The plane sprayed poison over a wide area and at a fast rate, and the locusts were almost the only viable way to escape before they could escape.
To this end, the government has spent enormous financial and material resources.
In the 1950s, the government spent heavily on the construction of a number of specialized locust control airports, equipped with a large number of aircraft.
Even in 2001, when locust plagues were rare, the government invested in the construction of three modern locust control airports in the three hardest-hit areas of Shandong, Hebei and Xinjiang.
The ancient methods of expelling locusts, catching and attacking, burning, deep burial in ditches, digging seeds, and copying with instruments that are difficult to fly when locust wings are exposed in the early morning are of little use and can only play a role in driving away. To put it bluntly, man's ability to fight out locusts is even inferior to that of domestic hens and ducks.
In some locust-infested areas, farmers herd large numbers of poultry into the fields and eat more locusts than people kill.
The ancients could not catch any locusts at all, so they could not eat them.
Third, it is useless to eat a few.
Locusts are common, not that they become infested with locusts.
Only when locusts gather in large numbers will they become locust plagues.
In 2001, locust plagues occurred in China's Yellow River Basin, along the Bohai Sea coast and northern Xinjiang, with a locust density of 10,000 pieces per square meter in some areas.
According to this standard, there are more than 600 square meters of land per acre, and there are as many as 6 million locusts.
How many people can eat? You may not be able to eat 600 of them. It doesn't matter if you eat a few.
That said, Sasha had eaten locusts several times, and it was really delicious and nutritious.
Once a locust plague occurs today, it is not a disaster but a good thing.
In 2017, there was a locust plague around the Xiashan Reservoir in Shandong, and nearly 1,000 acres of corn were affected.
The funny thing is that after the locust plague appeared, the surrounding people were overjoyed: many villagers who heard the news and rushed to join the team to catch locusts, and the side of the dam was quickly filled with vehicles. At night, you can still see a lot of "foodies" catching locusts with flashlights, "a locust is a handful of locusts, don't mention how refreshing, really fragrant", said the locust catcher. The reporter interviewed the local affected villagers: Uncle, will this locust plague affect the harvest? Uncle replied that the impact of locusts on the harvest of corn this time is really too great, and the corn production in the second half of the year will definitely decrease, but I caught locusts and sold a lot of money, and I easily grabbed a few hundred pounds one night, which was much stronger than planting corn...
What is even more exaggerated is that I heard that in addition to the locust plague, the next morning, many people from neighboring counties drove more than a hundred kilometers to come here, but they were stunned that they did not catch a single locust, and finally cursed and grinned. Some people in neighboring counties had prepared tools early to catch locusts, but they did not expect that before the locusts could fly there, they would be "wiped out" by the broad masses of the people.
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