Chang'an looked back at the embroidery piles, and the thousand doors on the top of the mountain were opened one after another.
A red dust concubine laughed, and no one knew that it was a lychee coming.
This is a Well-known Tang poem, and when we study this Tang poem, the teacher will tell us, "This poem exposes that the ruler, in order to satisfy his own appetite, did not hesitate to raise the teacher and move the people, labored the people and hurt the wealth, and effectively lashed out at the arrogance and extravagance of Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei."
In fact, "riding a red dust concubine laughing" is not only a labor and wealth, but also an outbreak of the limit of human life at the time of life and death.
"Lychees in Chang'an" vividly tells us how lingnan's lychees were sent to Chang'an, and the story of the limits of life behind them.
1. Unreasonable edicts
One year, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang suddenly issued an edict asking people to send the fresh lychees from Lingnan to the palace on June 1, because this day was Yang Guifei's birthday, and the old emperor wanted to please the concubine.
The emperor said that the people below would be honest and do their best to run errands, but transporting the fresh lychees from Lingnan to Chang'an was really not a human task, and it was simply an unfinished task.
The distance from Guangzhou to Xi'an on the Internet is more than 1700 kilometers, which is the shortest distance for modern people to meet the river bridge, the shortest distance to chisel the mountain, take a plane for more than two hours, take the high-speed rail for seven hours, Xi'an people want to eat Lingnan lychees is a very easy thing, but in Yang Guifei that will, but not so.
At that time, the mountains were not chiseled, there were no bridges on the river, there were more than 5,400 miles in the two places, and at that time, there were no planes, no high-speed railways, all walked on two legs, the fastest was also horses, and it was a legend to travel thousands of miles a day.
In ancient times, the fastest was 800 miles of expedited, that is still military intelligence, referring to running 400 kilometers a day, that is, the speed of God, every 10 kilometers along the way to change the stagecoach, and sometimes often run dead horses. In fact, in ancient times, 500 miles a day was already the ultimate speed.
At this extreme speed, from more than 5,000 miles of Lingnan to Chang'an to transport lychees to Chang'an for more than 10 days, when Lingnan to Chang'an Mountain Road, the horse ran 500 miles a day, a bit of a dream.
The most important thing is the physical properties of lychees, one day color change, two days incense changes, three days taste change.
See? The normal shelf life of lychees is also three days, and now it takes more than 10 days to transport lychees at an extreme speed, and in the hot weather in May, the lychees sent to Yang Guifei are not yet mushy, and they stink early.
Present such a lychee, waiting for you is either beheaded, or destroyed the whole family, the emperor is in a bad mood, carrying and destroying the three tribes, this is not a joke.
Who would dare to take such an edict?
2, the unlucky egg Li Shande was designed
No one dares to take the edict, what to do, only you push me, I push him, do not accept this edict.
Therefore, after the Shang Food Bureau, the Taifu Temple, the Miyaichi Envoy, and the Lingnan Dynasty Envoys took turns, they were sent to the Si Nong Temple, and Si Nongqing did not say a word and sent it directly to his subordinate department, the Shanglin Bureau.
Liu Shuling of the Shanglin Bureau got the edict and was blackened in front of his eyes, because it was already over to him, and he no longer had the right to transfer to other departments, so what to do?
Liu Shuling consulted with the employees of the department and decided to find a substitute for the dead ghost, so Li Shande, who was not in the department at the time, and was loyal and honest, was gloriously selected.
At that time, Li Shande was taking out a loan to buy a house, borrowed two hundred guan from Zhaofu Temple, spent three hundred guan to buy a house, just got the land title from the hand of the tooth man, his heart was bubbling with beauty, he worked for twenty-eight years, and finally had a place in Chang'an, thinking about the future, completely unaware that he had been designed by people, life and death were at stake.
When he returned to the Shanglin Department in a happy mood, colleagues congratulated him, and the leader even set up a banquet, saying that there were good things waiting for him, and Li Shande, who was honest and honest, did not think that he was designed at all, and after a few glasses of wine, his stomach was dizzy, and he was a little confused when he saw people.
At this time, the leader took out the emperor's edict, saying that he wanted him to be this lychee envoy, he saw that the edict read "Procurement of Special Gong Lychee Fried Ten Pounds", he also thought that he had won the jackpot, and he did not dream that he could get such a good errand, did not think much about anything, waved a large pen, signed his name, and he became a lychee messenger.
This also fully shows that there is no pie falling in the world, and even if there is a pie falling, it is a poisonous pie.
Li Shande, who felt that he had stepped on the luck, staggered home, and as a result, he fell halfway and threw the sticker to the ground, and when he picked it up, he found that the lychee frying on the lychee became lychee fresh, which scared him out of a cold sweat, and then looked at the yellow sticker that fell on the ground with the word fried, like a lightning strike, and ran back to the Forestry Department without dying.
Lin Shuling did not admit that there was a matter of pasting yellow, saying that what was written on the edict was lychee fresh, and Li Shande, who did not believe in evil, ran to the Sinong Temple to see another copy of the edict in triplicate, and the result was clearly written "lychee fresh" on it, without any trace of yellow paste.
It turned out that in ancient times, there were things like leather wipes and correction liquids, which could correct the wrong words, they wrote the wrong words, they used a piece of paper to write the correct words, pasted on the typo, this is called sticking yellow. In general, there are yellow stickers on the documents, and in order to prove that they are not modified privately, they will be sealed and sewn by the official, like the current stamp.
Li Shande looked left and right, and he couldn't find the official seal on his part of the edict, and he knew at this time that he had been designed, but there was no heaven to return.
3. In a battle against the water, Li Shande personally went to Lingnan to do experiments
No matter who you are, just bought a new house, when you are looking forward to the future infinitely, it is unacceptable to suddenly tell you that you are about to die.
Li Shande looked at the third day of February, there were still four months left before June 1, there were no more months to live, he was like having a nightmare, he walked home in despair, and met two friends Han Cheng and Du Fu halfway through. After listening to his encounter, they all agreed that he would undoubtedly die, and Han Cheng gave him an idea, leaving his wife and leaving in advance, and not implicating his family at that time. However, Du Fu, who had embarked on a dead end and turned around, advised him to go to Lingnan to see what the fresh lychee looked like and see if there was a chance for the peak to turn around.
Li Shande to this point, is already cornered, it is better to fight a battle against the water, the dead horse as a living horse doctor, just like the fish without water, do the final struggle, even if the final death, there is no regret.
When all was said and done, Han Chengfa taught him a chance, Li Shande made some preparations, rode a horse without a life, and ran for more than a month, arriving in Guangzhou on March 10.
Despite the exhaustion of the journey, Li Shande immediately went to the local government office to seek help, and as a result, Lingnan Jingluo made He Luguang think that he was a liar and almost slaughtered him, because the people did not believe that someone would come up with such a stupid thing and send Lingnan's lychees to Chang'an.
Although no one was willing to accompany Li Shande to do this death-seeking thing, but there was an imperial edict here, there was still some assistance, so the Lingnan Jingluo Official Office only gave him a passing charm and sent him away.
Loyal and honest, not good at improvisation, and clumsy, Li Shande took the pass charm and was helpless, but some merchants were interested in this thing, so Li Shande took the risk of selling this charm to Hu Shang Su Yu, anyway, the task of not completing the emperor was also going to die, and he exchanged fifteen hundred yuan for the experiment of transporting lychees.
Li Shande found the best lychee to grow the best family daughter Ah Gong, after consultation, let her ripen a kind of March red lychee in advance, he had to do the experiment in advance, otherwise he really waited until the lychee was ripe in May, but there was no time for him to do the experiment, so the ancient people were very wise, so there was a way to ripen the fruit.
Li Shande used his mathematical talents day and night, and after precise calculations, designed four different paths to see which one was the fastest and most time-saving.
The lychee was ripe, Li Shande let people pluck the lychee, wash it with salt water, in order to preserve the freshness, and then put it into a special double-layer urn, also for the sake of preservation, and then let the hired four teams of riders take the double-layer urn containing the lychee on the road, the first one took the Meiguan Road, took Qianzhou, Ezhou, Suizhou, the second took the Xijing Road, from Chenzhou, Hengzhou to Jiangling, the third branch also took the Meiguan Road, but after crossing the river, it went straight into Suzhou, along the Bian River, the Yellow River, and Luoshui to the capital, and the fourth branch directly boarded the boat, from the Pearl River into Qinshui, Huanshui, to Hanshui 3. Xiangzhou will then transfer land transportation.
After the cavalry set off, Li Shande began to wait at home for the flying pigeon to pass the book, recording which way to what time, where to go, the lychee began to change color, began to flow juice, looking at the information sent back by the four teams, densely wrote one piece of paper after another, and finally came to the conclusion of the first experiment, one of the teams set off on the afternoon of the fourth day, traveled fifteen hundred and eighty-seven miles, the lychee changed its taste.
That is to say, in the first experiment, lychees can be kept fresh for four days, four days can go 1,587 miles, and travel 400 miles a day.
For the first time, although Li Shande did not succeed, but also got some experience, some data, but the cost is also amazing, he sold the money has long been used up, helplessly had to venture to the Lingnan Jingluo Official Office to ask for five more pass charms, sell to Su Yu, continue to do experiments, he has now begun to gamble wildly.
Li Shande had become a lychee expert at this time, very proficient in the study of the characteristics of lychees, he further optimized the running route, as well as the preservation method of lychees, he optimized from the brine method to the double-layer urn soil cultivation method with branches, and continued the experiment.
After one experiment after another, he finally succeeded, the lychee can be kept fresh for eleven days, although the cavalry can not reach Chang'an, it is also very close to Chang'an, but this is his personal strength, if the use of the power of the imperial court, eleven days will certainly be able to reach Chang'an, then on June 1, the fresh lychee must be sent to the concubine.
4. Lingnan pursuit
His experiment was successful, but it also brought him the disaster of killing.
Transporting lychees from Lingnan to the capital, what no one could do, was now done by a small Nine Pin Official, with personal ability, so what would the emperor think then?
The emperor would think, such a delicious thing, why not send it earlier? What a small supervisor can accomplish, how can a Lingnan economic envoy with the power to command the military and civilians on one side fail to do? Can't he do it? Still not willing to do it? Then are the other things I gave him like Lychee and are not willing to do?
Is this a question of competence, or of attitude?
A small employee has done a good job of things that the leader can't do, and when it comes to the big boss, is the small employee doing it well or badly? Most of them are not good, and they may leave because they have been messed up.
The officialdom is even worse than the workplace, it was a feudal society, the era of the emperor's words, a thing that is not good is to lose his head, so for his own safety, Lingnan Jingluo also wants to prevent him from doing this well.
Li Shande, who did not know anything, led the team to carry out the last experiment with great interest, and the result was just out of Lingnan, he encountered robbery and killing, fortunately he was saved by a Lin Yinu, otherwise he was not beheaded by the emperor, inexplicably died halfway, and died before dawn, which was really a loss.
Li Shande didn't care why someone had robbed and killed him, he just wanted to quickly organize the various departments of the imperial court to transport lychees for the emperor, but what he didn't expect was that when there was no way to shirk it, all departments could still shirk it.
Honestly, he did not taste the mystery, in fact, everyone's ideas were the same as those of the Lingnan Jing, who wanted him to prove that he was stupid, and there was a problem with his attitude of doing things for the emperor?
5. Being picked peaches
Although all the ministries of the imperial court were pushing back, there were people who were willing to pick peaches and sell them well in front of the emperor, and this person was Yang Guozhong, the minister of state at that time.
Li Deshan was led to Yang Guozhong, and talked about his experiment, his lychee preservation method, his optimization route, and a group of arrays fully proved that his method was feasible, so Yang Guozhong gave him a silver medal, and with this silver medal, all the departments would assist him in transporting lychees.
Li Shande got the silver medal of the Minister of State, and began to summon the principal staff of the various yamen to a meeting, assign tasks, and after the assignment was complete, he went to Guangzhou again, he had to keep an eye on the things over there, and there could not be the slightest mistake.
Lingnan according to the line, he also along the route, a station one station to check the work, afraid of leakage, the result is that there is still a station people who have escaped, he in order to smoothly transport the lychee to Anchang, put his horse in that station, let the rider change horses, he himself walked to the next station to continue the inspection work.
When he arrived at the next station, he was so embarrassed that he was treated like a mountain snake spirit, his hair was scattered, his robes were all scratched, his legs were marked with scratch marks, and his left leg was seriously injured, and he was limping.
Li Shande is relying on precise calculations, optimizing the lychee preservation method again and again, several times the difficulty of escaping from death, on the first day of June, the synchronous rush to Chang'an, when the horses are about to arrive at the Chunming Gate, he has no strength, barely opened his eyes full of, he has done all the work he can do, the rest is to see the destiny, he will be here to see if he can send the lychee in time.
Finally, a small black dot in the distance flew over, accompanied by the smoke and dust raised by the horse's hooves, and a rider was hunched over his back, galloping with full force, and on the horse's back was loaded with two drum urns with thin rattan baskets, only one ride, two urns, and was sent to Chang'an on time.
As soon as the rider arrived at the gate of Chunming, twenty kaicheng drums were beating at the same time, and the two city gates that were usually never opened at the same time were rarely opened to the two sides together, and the flying horse plunged into the city gate hole without slowing down.
Just in response to the beginning of the "Chang'an look back embroidered into piles, the top of the mountain thousands of doors opened." A red dust concubine laughed, and no one knew that it was a lychee coming."
The lychees that Yang Guifei ate were transported from Lingnan to Chang'an in this way, not only to work hard and hurt the people, but also to break out of the limits of Li Shande's life at the time of life and death, and finally on June 1, Yang Guifei ate the lychees of Lingnan, which also let us see that human beings seem to have limits, as if there is no limit, but some limits can only erupt when they are alive and dead.