Today, sweet potatoes are a household name. It has become a common dish on the Chinese table.
However, in ancient times, he saved more than 300 million people by stealing a sweet potato vine to make people no longer hungry!
He is Chen Zhenlong, a man who saves thousands of lives with a vine!
"Hungry" of the Ming Dynasty
Although the Ming Dynasty was powerful, it was as powerful as the Ming Dynasty, and famine often occurred.
According to historical records, during the Chongzhen period, there was a major drought in Shaanxi for four consecutive years.
During these four years, the people did not harvest any grain, and a large number of victims fled elsewhere, which eventually triggered a nationwide famine.
The famine led to a sharp decline in the country's population by more than half.
When the Ming Dynasty was founded at the beginning, the population was about 60 million, and by the Wanli period, the population had reached 160 million people!
The increase in this number is a credit to our "father of sweet potatoes" Chen Zhenlong.
Risking death to steal vines
Chen Zhenlong's hometown was in the Fujian area, and at that time, because the land in Fujian was relatively poor, the grain harvest was very poor.
Young Chen Zhenlong took the imperial examination as his way out, studied hard every day, and obtained meritorious names.
However, the day did not go according to people's wishes, although Chen Zhenlong was admitted to a show talent, but the subsequent township examination has not been successful.
After many unsuccessful attempts, Chen Zhenlong decided to find another way out and gave up the examination to obtain a meritorious name.
In order to survive, he went to sea with some fleets of ships to do business.
Chen Zhenlong followed the caravan to Luzon (in present-day the Philippines), where he saw many plants that he had never seen in his hometown.
Luzon
At that time, Luzon was a Spanish colony, and the Spanish invasion brought a very magical food crop to their natives.
This crop can be eaten raw or cooked, steamed to eat, boiled and grilled to eat.
More importantly, this crop has a high yield, a short planting cycle, and a strong feeling of fullness.
Chen Zhenlong thought of his hometown, if this crop was planted, no one would starve to death. If it is further extended to the whole country, it will certainly be able to save many disaster victims.
Thinking of this, he secretly made up his mind that he must bring this magical crop back to his hometown.
This miraculous crop is now the sweet potato, which was called the vermilion potato at that time.
Chen Zhenlong's determination was not enough, and he still had to find a way to bring back the sweet potato vine seedlings.
It turned out that the Spanish customs at that time were very strict, and it was not allowed to take Luzon goods to other countries.
So before solving the problem of how to take it out, what Chen Zhenlong needs to do is to learn how to plant zhu potatoes, and then wait until an opportunity.
The Chinese caravan he followed did not stay in Luzon for long, and Chen Zhenlong, in order to complete his plan, did not choose to follow the caravan, but chose to stay in Luzon.
During his time in Luzon, Chen Zhenlong learned the cultivation method of vermilion vine while working as a coolie to support himself.
After holding out for a while, he heard that a Chinese caravan was coming to Luzon, and he knew the time had come.
It must have been a little difficult for the sweet potato fruit to be brought out of Luzon, so he paid for a vermilion vine.
In order to evade the inspection of Spanish customs, he thought of a way.
He mixed the vermilion vines into a box of hemp rope and then covered the goods with mud.
This disguise of his is difficult to find out without careful inspection.
Unsurprisingly, he evaded customs inspections.
Vermilion potato vine
But for Chen Zhenlong, this is only the first step. During the transport, he also had to guard against surprise inspections by the Spaniards at any time. Most importantly, the survival time of the seedlings is limited.
He did not dare to delay for a second, nor did he dare to stop for a minute, and returned to Fujian from Luzon in one breath.
In this way, a seedling of vermilion potato was brought back to China.
Planting promotion
After bringing the vermilion seedlings home, he planted them in his yard and carefully cared for them according to the planting methods he learned.
After a while, the vermilion seedlings did grow tender shoots. This scene gave Chen Zhenlong a sigh of relief and proved that this plant can also adapt to the land of his hometown.
He began to promote this crop in the village, and for a while, the whole village knew that planting this crop could not be starved, and there was no need to worry about a bad harvest.
A tribute to Chen Zhenlong
The following year, fujian suffered a severe drought, the people did not harvest, starved many people, Chen Zhenlong let his son Chen Jinglun play the patrol, telling the inspector about the results of his cultivation of zhu potatoes.
At first, the inspector was also suspicious, but the impact of this famine was too great, so he held the idea of a dead horse as a live horse doctor and agreed to the proposal to promote Zhu Potato.
After four months of experimental planting, the vermilion potato was harvested, and the inspector immediately promoted this crop on a large scale, so that the people could plant this drought-tolerant crop.
The large-scale promotion of Zhushu has prevented the entire people of Fujian from going hungry, so Chen Zhenlong's merits have been widely praised by later generations, and people have also built a number of meritorious shrines for the contributions of their father and son.
Because the flesh of the potato was golden, and because the inspector's surname was Jin at that time, the people gave this crop a name called golden potato.
Later, because this food was introduced by the outer fan, it had the name sweet potato, and in the Qing Dynasty, it was promoted to all parts of the country, and some people gave it a grounded name - sweet potato.
Sweet potatoes flourish
The uprisings of the people in history are inseparable from the lack of satisfaction of the people's food, clothing, shelter and transportation, once an uprising breaks out.
It proves that the ruler's inability to make the people have the idea of rebellion, and the first factor in this is eating.
Therefore, Chen Zhenlong solved the big problem of "eating" for the broad masses of the people and alleviated the famine of the Ming Dynasty for many years.
It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a history that lasted 50 years for the Ming Dynasty.
According to records, there were only 60 million people in the early days of the Ming Dynasty, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the population had increased to 160 million.
Since then, China's population has entered a period of soaring.
Many people compare the "prosperous world of Kangqian" to the "prosperous age of sweet potatoes".
This view seems to me to be somewhat justified.
Without Chen Zhenlong's sweet potatoes, the Ming Dynasty, which had experienced several major disasters and famines, could not have increased its population.
After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, China's population decreased for a short time, and during the Qianlong period, Chen Zhenlong's five generations of grandsons promoted sweet potatoes to the north and taught the people in the north to grow sweet potatoes.
At that time, the main crops in the north were wheat, rice, etc., and the requirements for the growing environment of these crops were more stringent, and once a major drought and flood occurred, the harvest results would be affected.
However, sweet potatoes have changed the way of cultivation in this area, and the original mountains and slopes cannot be cultivated, but the sweet potatoes can take root and grow happily.
In the late Qing Dynasty, the number of people in China came to 40,000 million, which has something to do with the contribution of sweet potatoes.
During the Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty, in order to thank Chen Zhenlong for his contributions, a "First Potato Pavilion" was built for him in Wushi Mountain, Zhejiang Province, as a way to express the memory of Chen Zhenlong
Chen Zhenlong has great merit, and people say: "Before Chen Zhenlong promoted sweet potatoes, after Yuan Longping rice to cool off." ”
They are all great figures who have benefited in the thousands of years, so that many people are not hungry, and they have made great contributions to China's development!
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