The past of Su Dongpo's West Lake is not only Su Causeway

"If you want to make the West Lake more beautiful than the West, it is always appropriate to wear light makeup and thick makeup." Su Dongpo (1037-1101), a great scholar of the Song Dynasty, who served in Hangzhou twice in 1072 and 1089, systematically discovered the value of the West Lake, leaving behind a bunch of poems with boundless wind and moon, a well-known Su Causeway, a bowl of Dongpo meat suitable for young and old, and literary friends chanting and singing, and it seems that life is particularly elegant.

Chen Qinzhou, deputy secretary general of the Hangzhou Municipal Historical Society and director of the Cultural and Historical Research Association of the Shangcheng District CPPCC Committee, said that in fact, Su Dongpo's tenure as an official in Hangzhou was not at all easy, and in addition to personally dredging the West Lake, he also promoted the advantages and disadvantages and ran several practical projects for people's livelihood.

Remediation of ancient wells and water pipes

Let the people drink "West Lake tap water"

Throughout the ages, human civilization has always thrived on water. In Su Dongpo's grassroots governance program, water supply is the first priority.

Perhaps people will be curious: Hangzhou relies on the Qiantang River, and sits on the West Lake, and is still worried about not being able to drink water? Su Dongpo wrote to the imperial court's "Begging to Open hangzhou's West Lake", which can answer this question: "Hangzhou is a state, the homeland of the river and the sea, the water springs are salty and bitter, and the residents are scattered." Since Tang Li Bi, the lake water was first introduced to make six wells, and then the residents were enough to be in the water, and they were rich and rich, and millions of people gathered together, waiting for this and then eating. ”

Su Dongpo's first visit to Hangzhou was in the fifth year of Xi Ning (1072), when he was 35 years old and held the official position of general judge, assisting Taishou Chen Xiang. Both Su and Chen left the capital to become officials at the local level because they opposed Wang Anshi's "Green Seedling Law." In order to solve the problem of hangzhou people's draft water, the two cooperated with tacit understanding and cooperated to carry out measures such as digging ditches, changing well walls, repairing loopholes, and repairing six wells dug by Li Bi in the Tang Dynasty.

For this matter, Su Dongpo had a clear record in the "Records of the Six Wells of Qiantang": "In the autumn of the fifth year of Xi Ning, Taishou Chen Gongshu described the beginning of the ancient times and asked the people about their illness. They all know: 'The six wells are not ruled, and the people do not give water.' The south well is ditched and the well is high, and the rate is often not in the water. 'Oh, I am here, but I will make the people seek water without hesitation!' ...... And the water of Xiangguo is so large that it overflows, and the south is injected into the river, and a thousand ships are loaded, and the hundreds of husks are instantaneous. ”

In the fourth year of Yuan You (1089 AD), when Su Dongpo came to Hangzhou for the second time after 17 years, he was 52 years old, and Liujing fell into disrepair again. So he carried out the ancient well remediation project again, and also dug a new well so that the farthest residents could drink water. Today, only the "Xiangguo Well" of these wells still survives, near the bustling Jiefang Road Xiebai Commercial Building in Hangzhou today.

In addition to rectifying the wells in Hangzhou, Su Dongpo also spent a lot of effort to improve the water diversion pipeline. There were originally 6 reservoirs in Hangzhou, scattered everywhere, and the transportation pipeline was made of bamboo pipes and was often damaged. As a military commander, Su Dongpo sent more than a thousand troops to carry out the "pipeline upgrading project", replacing bamboo pipes with terracotta pipes, protecting them with stone slabs, connecting the reservoir and the West Lake to each other, so that the people could drink the "West Lake Water and Tap Water" with stable quality.

Waterway traffic "control"

Ensure smooth transportation

In Su Dongpo's governing philosophy, water transport is equally important as water supply.

During the Song Dynasty, there were two canals in Hangzhou– the Yanqiao River (today's Middle River) and the Maoshan River (today's East River). They run north-south through the city and join Qiantang Bay with a lot of silt. Generally every four or five years, the canal bed needs to be dredged once, and the silt dug out of the riverbed, too late to be moved, will be directly piled up in front of the people on the shore, and the smell is unpleasant. Worse still was the traffic situation, when a boat had to walk for days to get out of the city of Hangzhou, and the boat had to be pulled on the shore with people and cattle, and the river bank was chaotic...

How to "control congestion" in waterway traffic? There was no "city brain" at that time, and Su Dongpo showed good governance ability: he asked experts to keep the Yanqiao River, which has a large population along the coast, keep it clean, flow through the urban area, and try to let the sea water flow from elsewhere into the sparsely populated Maoshan River along the coast; in addition, build a sluice gate in the south of the Qiantang River, close the sluice gate when the tide is high, release water when the tide is low, and the two canals meet in the north of the city. In this way, the sediment brought by the sea tide is reduced, and the Maoshan River flows through the eastern suburbs for three or four miles, the sediment has been precipitated, and the waters in Hangzhou are relatively clean.

Subsequently, Su Dongpo opened a new canal outside the Yuhang Gate in the north of Hangzhou City, eight feet deep, connected with the West Lake to ensure the water level of the canal in the city. In this way, the cost and trouble of dredging the Yanqiao River in the city will be avoided, and the smooth transportation will be guaranteed... See, the "old mayor" of Hangzhou not only writes poetry, but also a good hand in urban transportation planning.

Disaster relief is tax-free and medical treatment

Let the people live and work in peace and contentment

The "History of Song" records: "In the twenty years of Shi, he was reborn, and he had virtue for the people, a portrait of his home, and a good diet." And he made a shrine to repay the favor. "What this is said is that after Su Dongpo came to Hangzhou for the second time as an official, every household in the city had a portrait of Su Shi, and before eating, they had to wish him a happy birthday, and some people built a shrine for him.

Why are the people of Hangzhou so grateful to Su Dongpo? Not only because the poet vigorously dredged the West Lake, straightened out the water supply and water transportation, but also carried out a series of wisdom governance to protect the people's livelihood in the midst of emergency.

In 1089, Su Dongpo took the title of Longtuge Scholar and became the Zhizhou of Hangzhou. As soon as he took office, he encountered serious natural disasters: floods at the beginning of the year, and there was no way to plant early rice in the fields; in May and June, the late rice had just been planted, and there was a drought. Two consecutive seasons of harvests have been cut off, rice prices have soared, and the people are hungry and hungry.

Su Dongpo couldn't sit still. He successively played to the imperial court and the empress dowager, and wrote 7 times in half a year. Why did he play to the Empress Dowager? It turned out that in the second year of Jiayou (1057), after the 20-year-old poet took the temple examination, Song Renzong excitedly said to Empress Cao: "Find the talent of the prime minister for your children and grandchildren!" These words had deep roots in the Song Dynasty, and the wives of Emperor Renzong, Emperor Yingzong, and Emperor Shenzong all protected or reused Su Dongpo when they became empresses.

7 times on the book, what does Su Dongpo ask for? He pleaded with the imperial court to immediately allocate grain to help the people, and requested a reduction in the autumn tax, exempting one-third of the rice supply on the two Zhejiang West Roads, and granting the monks a letter of encouragement (Du Mu was the identity certificate of the monks, the Song Dynasty was uniformly managed and bought and sold by the central government, and the du mu could be exempted from rent) for rice relief. On the other hand, Su Dongpo also continued to buy millet to fill the granary and prepare for the famine year.

In the spring of the following year, Su Dongpo, who was concerned about the people, sold rice at a reduced price, made porridge and medicines to distribute to the people, and took Dr. Langzhong on a tour to see and treat patients... He really loves the water and soil of Hangzhou deeply.