Born into a wealthy family southwest of Shouguang City in Shandong Province, Jia Sixun loved to read from an early age and often kept his hands on scrolls. He was young in Goyang County (an ancient place name. Emperor Huan of Han set gaoyang commandery in gaoyang county, which is now the old city village of Gaoyang county, Hebei) When he was too punctual and attached importance to the development of agriculture, he worked hard to study, and on the other hand, he went deep into the folk to learn production knowledge from old farmers and herdsmen, and also collected folk proverbs about climate, seasons, and farming. He himself also opened a plot of land in the house to grow vegetables and raise some chickens, ducks, cows and sheep. Jia Sixun accumulated a large amount of materials from books and practice, and prepared sufficient conditions for writing the "Qi Min Zhi Shu". "Qi Min Zhi Shu" is a work summarizing agricultural production technology, "Qi Min" is to make the people have enough food and clothing, and "Qi Min Zhi Shu" is an important method.
Jia Sixun
As we all know, China is a traditional agricultural country that has only begun to gradually industrialize in recent decades. During the Northern Wei Dynasty, when Jia Sixun lived, agriculture occupied an important position in the national economy. In fact, successive Dynasties and Dynasties in China have also attached great importance to agriculture, and "persuading nongsang" is a rule set from the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Zhou Li, Diguan Situ records twelve ministries of religious production, involving farming techniques such as field farming, fruit trees, and vegetables, production techniques for harvesting mountain timber and collecting wild fruits, breeding techniques for raising birds and animals, and techniques for the operation of side industries such as chemical treatment of silk and hemp. It almost included the agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and sideline industries of the Western Zhou Dynasty. All of the above shall be administered by the subordinates of the Grand Master.
shepherd
According to legend, in order to remind the peasants to make preparations for spring ploughing, ancient officials also sent servants to temporarily build an official factory next to the county god temple the day before the spring, and then the servants beat drums and gongs, carried the spring cattle and plough rakes of the county grand masters and paper ties, and went from the county yamen to the official factory, burned incense to pay homage to the emperor's queen earth, and then led by the county officials, followed by the squires, and visited the shrine in turn. Along the way, the crowd of onlookers beat gongs and drums, and set off firecrackers, which was lively. The servants then carried the paper-tied spring cattle back to the street, and then they pointed them at the sky and burned them. Of course, such spring ploughing focuses on ritualized performances, but it is rare for an ancient official like Jia Sixun to really swoop down and grasp agriculture, and then grow into an agronomist.
Play spring cattle
Based on his personal experience, Jia Sixun summed up that in engaging in agriculture and animal husbandry, we must carefully observe and accumulate experience, and we cannot rely solely on our own good intentions. He raised a flock of sheep himself, and in order to make the sheep eat more grass and grow more fat, he put a lot of hay into the sheepfold. Who knows how long it wasn't long before the sheep died head by head. Why is this? He couldn't find a reason when he thought about it. Later, he ran more than a hundred miles to find an experienced old sheep, and only then did he find out the reason for the dead sheep. The old sheep told him that the sheep loved cleanliness the most, and put a lot of hay in the pen, and many sheep ate on it, and the sheep ate and stepped on it, and also peed on the hay. How can such a dirty forage love clean sheep be willing to eat? The sheep didn't have enough to eat, so they slowly starved to death. Jia Sixun did not find out the habit of sheep loving cleanliness, and as a result, he did bad things with good intentions. He also wrote about this experience in the Qi Min Zhi Shu.
graze
Jia Sixun is an honest scientist. When he wrote this book, he studied the works of his predecessors on agriculture, collected folk songs and proverbs, interviewed experienced old peasants, and made careful observations and comparisons in the actual production struggle, from book knowledge to investigation and research, from theory to practice, without relaxation. There are one hundred and fifty or sixty kinds of ancient books cited by Jia Sixun in the "Qi Min Zhi Shu", most of which are now lost, and it is only by relying on it that a scale and a half claw have been preserved.
The Qi Min Zhi Shu is a total of ninety-two articles, divided into ten volumes, and like the popular style at that time, it is divided into main text and self-annotation, with the main text of about 70,000 words and about 40,000 words of self-annotation. It includes agronomy, horticulture (cultivation of vegetables and fruit trees), forestry, animal husbandry (poultry, livestock rearing), fish farming and agricultural product manufacturing (e.g. brewing, food processing) and other agriculture, handicrafts, etc. Among them, agronomy and horticulture occupy an important part. Since the Western Zhou Dynasty, the knowledge and technology that China has acquired in agriculture and handicrafts has been summarized in the Qi Min Zhi Shu.
Qi min want to be skilled
In terms of the cultivation of crops, the working people in ancient China have long paid attention to the timing and geographical advantages, and Jia Sixun further pointed out: "When the weather is favorable, the amount of land is advantageous, and the effort is less and the success is more." Otherwise, it will be like "go to the spring to enjoy the trees, go to the top of the mountain to catch fish, and only come back empty-handed", or "throw water against the wind, roll the ball from the flat ground to the slope", with more force and less effect. He correctly proposed to cultivate and manage different crops according to different seasons, different climates and different soil characteristics, that is, "look at the sky, look at the ground, and look at the crops." In the principle of "when it is good to the heavens, measure the land", he divides the planting time into three hours according to different crops. For example, planting millet, early February is the upper time, early March is the middle time, early April is the lower time, and so on. He also divided the geographical advantages into the upper, middle, and lower three. For example, millet is based on mung beans and adzuki beans (i.e., pre-stubble crops); hemp, millet, and flax as the bottom are in the middle; turnips as the bottom, and the same crop is sown according to different soil forces and seasons.
Spring
While emphasizing the adaptation of the land and the conditions of the time, he also attaches great importance to soil improvement and farming techniques (ploughing, hoeing, etc.). He proposed to always maintain the appropriate amount of water contained in the soil, to enhance the fertility of the soil, to take advantage of the difference in crop absorption nutrients, crop rotation, intercropping, mixed cropping and set cropping. He first summed up the experience that the depth of cultivated land is determined according to different situations, he said, "The initial ploughing desires to be deep, and the desire to change land is shallow," and he also said, "Autumn ploughing is deep, and spring and summer are shallow." The advantage of deep ploughing is that it can eradicate weeds, prevent pests and diseases, and absorb more water, loosen the soil, and the roots of crops can grow well if they are deeply rooted. This is the knowledge accumulated by the long-term production of the working people in ancient times, and Jia Sixun summed up this knowledge and proposed that the cultivated land should be deep and shallow under what circumstances.
Ploughing the fields
Jia Sixun also has a lot of valuable experience in farming technology. In terms of vegetable cultivation, he believes that land should be highly utilized, and production should be manure and water. In terms of fruit tree planting, he introduced the grafting method in detail, and the method of picking dates in the book is the same as that used in the Xinzheng Jujube District of Henan Province today. In the raising of livestock, he paid attention to feeding and feeding water. He said that feeding and feeding water should be suitable for the characteristics of livestock, and if this is done, there is no livestock that is not fat or strong. He quoted the folk song "Win the cattle and inferior horses cold food (Qingming Festival)" (thin cattle and weak horses can not pass the cold food) to illustrate that livestock survive the winter, and if they are not fed well, they will cause death. For domestic animals for meat, he advocated the "castration method", which we still use today.
Jujube
The "Qi Min Zhi Shu" also introduces more than twenty methods of making wine, detailing the brewing process. Since ancient times, wine is a must-have for celebrations, nourishing yin and yang, is something that human society is proud of, a masterpiece of agronomy, if there is no wine-making process, it is incomplete. For a while, Jia Sixun was thinking about how to write about the method of brewing wine, but he could write it and write it, but he couldn't do it. He thought hard and visited the winemakers near Gaoyang, but he felt that it was not satisfactory to write. So he called in his friends and relatives and took a sip before he spoke. I drank a lot that night. After he finished drinking, he wanted to review the recently written manuscript again, but as soon as the wine came up, he was a little confused. At this time, his brother Jia Sitong stepped forward and said, "Why did you sleep?" The moonlight is so good tonight, why don't we go out for a visit.
winemaking
Jia Sixun was worried about not being able to write an article, so he gladly agreed. The two got into the carriage and galloped in the moonlight. The car was also really fast, the two only felt the wind in their ears, the scenery on both sides moved back rapidly, and only the big and round moon was still hanging in the sky. I don't know how long I ran, in front of a small town, only to see the lights in the house, the wine outside fluttering, and the sound of drinking and writing poetry from time to time. Jia Sixun was extremely happy at first sight and said to Jia Sixu: What a good place. Why don't we go in and have another drink. Jia Sitong readily agreed. The two entered a liquor store, and the owner came forward with a smile on his face. The two sat down, and the dishes were meaty and vegetarian. After a while, the wine was hot, and it had not yet been ingested, and I only felt a strange smell. The jia sixong brothers could not help but sigh: good wine, good wine also.
Winemaking workshop
The two of them drank happily, but they did not feel that the wine was half drunk. Jia Sixun called the store and asked: What is this place? Why after drinking, the mouth is not dry, the throat is not dry, and the head is not on the head. The shopkeeper said: This is the ancient town of Hou, rich in wine. Just at this moment, more than ten boys in green clothes passed by in front of the door, which further aroused Jia Sixun's curiosity. The shopkeeper said: The wine is brewed here, and the use is: the summer feed is fed to make koji, and the autumn and winter wine is opened in the spring. Stepping on the song will be a child. The shopkeeper also said: Hey, who are these two gentlemen, and they look a bit heady. Jia Sixun couldn't hide it, so he told the truth. When the shopkeeper heard it, he hurriedly prostrated his head: Although mr. Gui is too conservative, he still writes "Qi Min Zhi Shu" to benefit the people, which is respectable and respectable.
Jia Sixun hurriedly stepped forward, trying to help the store. The store took the opportunity to request an inscription. Jia Sixun gladly wrote down: The Divine Comedy came out of Hou Town, and the wine was fragrant through the bones. Before the incense was finished, Jia Sixun suddenly woke up, and it turned out to be a dream. And when I looked down, there were really these ten words on the paper, and there was still a slight aftertaste in my mouth. Jia Sixun was overjoyed, and set off in the unknown and came to the ancient town of Houzhen. In Houzhen, he not only interviewed the real craft of making divine comedy and wine, but also bought several jars of good wine before leaving. It seems that in order to complete Jia Sixun's summary of the method of winemaking, even God is helping him.
The altar of wine hides wine
Jia Sixun's hometown of Shandong was the most developed area of ancient agriculture in China. In the more than a hundred years from the end of the Western Jin Dynasty to the unification of the north by the Northern Wei Dynasty, this region experienced a long period of war disasters, but the working people engaged in productive labor under the condition of armed self-protection in Wubi, providing wealth for the powerful and powerful clans. Each dock wall becomes a self-sufficient production unit. After the Northern Wei unified the north, long-term stability brought more convenience to this economic development. With the implementation of the "equalized field system," the enthusiasm of self-cultivated peasants in production has been enhanced, and agriculture has made considerable progress during this period. The Qi Min Zhi Shu reflects this situation. The varieties of food crops are recorded in a fairly rich variety, as many as eighty-six in terms of millet.
nomad
In terms of animal husbandry, the scale of production is not small, taking sheep as an example, a family raises thousands of sheep, how much feeding is needed, how to plant these feedings, the book has a detailed description of the Xianbei people from outside the Sai, gaoche people have a wealth of knowledge of pest grazing. The Qi Min Zhi Shu draws nourishment from this knowledge. Regarding the technology of making puff pastry from dairy processing and blankets from single wool, it is obvious that these Cypriots have summed up the production experience of these Cypriots.
The struggle for production provided an inexhaustible source for Jia Sixun's scientific activities. Jia Sixun's achievements in agronomy surpassed those of his predecessors. After him, several important agricultural books in our country drew important nourishment from him. However, the Southern and Northern Dynasties were an era of religious superstition, and Jia Sixun himself was a big landlord. The limitations of the times and the limitations of class make this scientific masterpiece seem to be mixed with grains of sand in gold, dim in the brilliance, scientific truth, and superstitious dross. For example, he said, "If you plant nine peach trees in the east, you can have more children." (Peng Zhongfu/Collation; reference to the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties)