What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Statue of Qin Shi Huang
Transportation is the key to maintaining the survival and development of a country, and since Qin Shi Huang unified China, he has begun to implement the system of "books with the same text, and cars on the same track" throughout the country, with the purpose of unifying the whole country. In fact, before Qin unified the six countries, a very large transportation network system was established, which laid the foundation for Qin to unify the six countries.
After the unification of the Qin Dynasty, the development of China's water and land transportation entered a new stage. In terms of waterways, the Qin Dynasty completely opened up the transportation network of the Yellow River, Yangtze River, Pearl River and other river basins, and built straight roads and chi roads on land. Let's take you to see what Qin's traffic development history looks like.
First, to unify, first build roads
In 222 BC, the State of Qin sent the general Wang Ben to attack Liaodong and other places, and successively destroyed the Yan and Zhao states, at this time, the Seven Heroes of the Warring States were only left with the State of Qi and the State of Qin. After the victory of Qi Wang Jian and Qi Xiangxiang, he set up a defensive force on the west side of the transit line of the State of Qi to defend against the attack of the State of Qin, but the general Wang Ben led a large army to bypass the defense of the State of Qi and reached the capital of the State of Qi, Linzi, and soon the State of Qi surrendered, and the State of Qin unified all of China.
As the saying goes, "If you want to be rich, first build roads", and when Qin unified the Six Kingdoms, it changed this sentence into "to unify, first build roads". There were many factors in Qin's unification of China, but the development of transportation was one of them, and when King Hui of Qin attacked the Shu kingdom, he used the boardwalk and the Golden Bull Road to cross the Qin Mountains, and finally destroyed the ancient Shu state.
In 1986, archaeologists found one of China's earliest paper maps in the area of present-day Tianshui Fangmatan in Gansu Province, drawing the section of the road from Fangmatan to Huangjiaping, which was opened by the Qin people at that time. The map is dated around 300 BC and reflects the traffic to the south of qinling during the Warring States period.
The Qin people are also good at building bridges and cars, they have built a pontoon bridge in the Yellow River area, and produced the earliest double-wheeled car in China, because of the development of car repair and car-making technology, there are more than 1,000 vehicles accompanying King Qin Zhaoxiang when he travels, which shows how developed the Qin state car industry is.
There is a passage in the "History of Zhang Yilie" that says: "There is Bashu in western Qin, large ships have accumulated millet, and the floating river has descended, reaching more than three thousand miles in Chu, traveling more than three hundred miles a day, without effort, and not more than ten days away from the river pass." The Jiangguan here, also known as "Qutang Pass", was near the Qutang Gorge in present-day Chongqing, and was the main pass of the Chu State in the Spring and Autumn Period. This record shows that at that time, there were not only many ships in the Qin State, but also the ability to load goods was very strong, and the transportation speed was super fast.
Qutang Gorge
Second, the highways and water passages in the Qin Kingdom
After Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, the territory of the north to Liaodong, west to Longyou, south to the South China Sea, east to the area of today's Shandong Peninsula, these areas from the Capital of Qin Xianyang are relatively remote, it is difficult to reach directly, in order to effectively manage the homeland of the Six Kingdoms, the Qin State built Chi Dao in these areas, and established a very developed transportation network in the country.
The territory of the Qin Dynasty
For example, the East China Sea Road was built in the Guanzhong area, from the Qin capital Xianyang to the east, reaching today's Jiangsu and Shandong and other places, which is also the main east-west transportation route of the Qin Dynasty, somewhat similar to today's Longhai Railway.
In the south, nanyang road was built, from today's Nanyang via Wuguan to today's Jingzhou area, which was the main trunk road of the Qin state and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Later, the State of Qin built the Bashu Road from Xianyang through Hanzhong to Bashu and other places, which became the prototype of the early Shu Dao.
Schematic diagram of Qin Chi Road
How wide is the track? "Fifty steps wide, three feet and trees", between the chi road is the royal road, the two sides are the side roads, the kings generally take the royal road, the ministers generally take the carriage and horse road, and use trees to separate the two roads.
Of all the roads, the most impressive are the straight and five-foot roads. In 212 BC, Qin Shi Huang opened a straight road from present-day Xianyang to Jiuyuan Commandery (present-day Baotou, Inner Mongolia). Jiuyuan Commandery was a newly opened territory when Qin Shi Huang attacked the Xiongnu in the north, and in order to consolidate the northern frontier, it opened up straight roads and built the Great Wall to defend the Xiongnu in the north.
Straight road is the highway of the Qin State, from qin capital to Jiuyuan County, 900 kilometers away, it only takes 3 days to take the fast horse at that time, in the ancient times when the traffic was not developed, such a speed was already quite fast, which shows the high level of construction of the Qin straight road at that time.
In order to connect Yunnan with southern Sichuan, the State of Qin began to build the Five Foot Road. The road in the southwest region is narrow, so the construction of the five-foot road is extremely arduous, and the road is about five feet wide, so it is named five-foot road.
The construction of the Five Foot Road has a profound impact on the traffic in today's southwest China, and the Five Foot Road has been built from today's Yibin to Zhaotong, Yunnan, with a total length of nearly 300 kilometers, and the construction of the Five Foot Road has made the communication between the Central Plains Dynasty and the Southwest Yi region more convenient.
Five-foot road ruins
In addition, in terms of waterway transportation, the construction of the spiritual canal is a historical legacy left to us by Qin. After the unification of Qin, it conquered Baiyue in the Lingnan area, and later set up Guilin, Nanhai and Xiang County. The reason why Qin was able to break through baiyue was that the construction of the spirit canal was indispensable.
Where is the Spirit Canal? Just between nanling Dupangling and Yuechengling, there is a gentle terrain, and the traffic channel connecting the Central Plains and Lingnan regions, the Lingqu is built on this channel, just become the water channel connecting the Xiangshui of the Yangtze River and the Li River of the Pearl River, which is also the first dredging of the Pearl River water system and the Yangtze River system.
Today's Spiritual Canal
For Qin, whether it was the annexation war during the Warring States period or the later unification of the world, the development of transportation was the fundamental factor for it to achieve its hegemony. It was these ancient roads built during the Qin Dynasty that laid an extremely important foundation for the development of road traffic in ancient China.
With the unification of the six kingdoms by the Qin, the construction of a nationwide transportation network became possible. On the basis of the Warring States, the qin dynasty's water and land transportation network was more developed than ever before, especially in the remote mountainous areas and ethnic minority areas, such as the five-foot road to the southwest region, the chi road that connected the whole world, the straight road to the northern grassland belt, the opening of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River system, and so on. The establishment of the national transportation network laid a more solid foundation for the unification of the Han Dynasty and the establishment of China's transportation network.