A gentle gust of wind awakens the body that has been sleeping for a thousand years; a gentle gust of wind blows away the mysterious veil of history. Standing on the shoulders of time, I talk to history.
We usually hear a line in some costume dramas, that is, "eight hundred miles plus urgent". So, when did ancient times use it? It is usually used when the situation is very urgent or where urgent military intelligence needs to be delivered. In ancient times, "eight hundred miles plus urgent" was the fastest way to convey information. So how fast is it? Even experts say that if placed in modern times, even express delivery may not be able to catch up.
Modern people have a lot of communication tools, such as mobile phones, and if there is anything you need to say on your mobile phone, you can say it. In ancient times, it was not as convenient to pass on important news as it is now, although in ancient times there were palanquins, wooden boats, ox carts and other means of transportation, but if there was an emergency, it would be delayed for a long time. The "Eight Hundred Mile Express" is different and very efficient. It's just a caravanserai. Every 20 miles there will be a coaching inn, which uses fast horses.
If the official document is written with the words "fly immediately", it must be transmitted at a rate of 300 miles per day, and the transmission speed can reach up to 800 miles. In the Tang Dynasty, the more urgent intelligence requirements were 500 miles per day, while the Tang Dynasty's one-mile combination was about 454.2m, that is to say, the fastest time of 800 miles could be completed in as long as 2 days, and the express delivery sometimes took 3 to 4 days to deliver.
During the Tang Dynasty, post stations were distributed throughout the country, and there were not only post houses in the station, but also facilities such as stagecoach boats and stagecoach fields. A total of 20,000 people worked in the caravanserai. The stationers working in the caravanserai have a very low status and a very heavy work task, not only carrying a paperwork bag on the road, but also responsible for cleaning the stagecoach. We all know that there is a poem in Du Mu's "Passing huaqing palace" called: "A red dust concubine laughs, and no one knows that it is a lychee." "In order to deliver lychees, it is inevitable that several horses will die of exhaustion every year, and even the officers and men of the station will die of overwork."