The text | historical information is not very good
Editor|Historical sources are not very good
The number of words in the article is about 1900 words
The reading time is about 4 minutes
Kublai Khan destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty in 1279, ending the situation of more than 370 years of division and confrontation between the five dynasties and ten kingdoms, the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Western Xia regimes on the mainland since the end of the Tang Dynasty, realizing unprecedented unification in Chinese history, and reorganizing road traffic throughout the country and achieving revitalization and development.
Water transportation in the Yuan Dynasty (Part 1)
The Yuan Empire also attached great importance to inland water transport and offshore water transportation, and the Yuan people dredged a new canal line and opened the most convenient offshore water transport line, thereby promoting the circulation of goods from north to south and invigorating the eastern economy.
Canal dredging and water transportation
In order to transport grain from Jiangnan to Beijing and connect the political center of the north and the economic center of the southeast, the Yuan government organized the dredging of the Grand Canal between the north and the south.
The "Yuan Shi Hequ Zhi" records that after the founding of the Yuan Dynasty, "the internal capital water superintendent, and the external river canal division, to promote water conservancy and repair the river embankment as the task."
The two towers and the Baifu waters are the Tonghui River, in order to help the Cao, and the Jingshi has no labor to transfer pay; Guide the Hun River, dredge the Luan water, and Wuqing Pingluan has no danger of drowning; The river is turbulent, and it is really free from the trouble.
The meeting was held to connect the river to Linqing, to connect the goods from the north to the south, to dredge the three whites of Shaanxi, to irrigate the fields in Guanzhong... At that time, the good words and water conservancy were like Tai Shi Guo Shoujing, and Gai was not without others.
A generation of meritorious work, so it is impossible to be lost." This passage summarizes the water conservancy and shipping undertakings of the Yuan Dynasty, and there is no false exaggeration.
During the Liaojin period, the northern section of the Grand Canal (north of the Yellow River to Tongzhou) was silted, and after the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, it was dredged section by section and some new waterways were dug. The first to open was Tonghui River.
In 1291, Guo Shoujing, the superintendent of the capital, proposed; From Baifu Village in Changping County, turn south to the west of the mountain spring, collect its water along the way, enter the capital from the west gate, form a pool of water, and then lead to the southeast, after leaving the city, east to Gaolizhuang in Tong County, connected with the Grand Canal, with a total length of more than 164 li, more than 20 water gates in the middle, to control the flow of water, in order to pass the transportation.
After this proposal was approved, construction began in the spring of 1292 and was completed in the autumn of the following year. Since then, "the ship has passed, and both public and private are convenient".
Prior to this, Tongxian County to Beijing for more than 50 miles, every year land transportation taxes and grain were tens of millions of stones, the people could not bear the suffering, after the opening of the Tonghui River, this heavy burden was relieved.
Later, during the Chengzong and Wuzong periods, the government added canal management personnel, which ensured the smooth flow of this canal by rectifying the riverbed, repairing the sluices, inspecting the treachery of boat households, and stopping large households along the river from intercepting water for irrigation fields.
From Tong County to Tianjin through Hexi and Yangcun, not only carries the Grand Canal grain storage and Nanlai department stores, but also carries grain storage and department stores transported from Tianjin Haikou through offshore Cao, so it is very important for the supply of Jingshi Division, as soon as there is a shallow blockage, the price of Jingshi will immediately rise.
Therefore, the Yuan government has always been very concerned about the water situation in this section, and constantly sent people to monitor the repair and dredging in order to "make the government and the people directly reach the capital, and benefit the country and the people."
The section of the canal from the north bank of the Yellow River in Weizhou, Henan through Damingfu and Hejianfu to Tianjin, was then called the Yuhe. The soil in this area is loose, the river channel is easy to silt, and up and down Cangzhou, the river channel is higher than the ground on both sides, and there is a constant danger of breaking the mouth.
In addition, for a period of time, the river defense was left unattended, so that some people took soil from the embankment, causing the dike to fail, and some people dug wells from under the embankment to divert canal water to irrigate the garden, thus causing repeated floods.
Large households and local officials on both sides of the strait, for the sake of their own interests, regard their neighbors as beholds, and the disaster situation has been aggravated. For the benefit of the canal transportation, although the Yuan government sent people to govern it many times, it never got the essentials and failed to make the Yuhe really unblocked.
From the southern end of the Yuhe River to the southwest of Jun County, Henan, there is still a distance from the Yellow River, and ships going north along the canal from the south to Zhongluan southwest of Kaifeng cannot advance, so the section from Zhongluan to Jun County must be changed to land transportation, and the car and boat go up and down, delay the day, and lose a lot.
Therefore, some people suggested that the middle section of the Grand Canal since the Sui and Tang dynasties be straightened and a new waterway should be opened between Xucheng and Linqing in Shandong. In this way, the river was built.
In order to control the flow of water, 31 sluices have been built on the Huitong River, which are very large, and the head gate of Huitong Town is 100 feet long and 80 feet wide, allowing large ships with a load of more than 1200 kilograms.
In order to enable Jiangnan Qing ships to go directly north from Huai'an to the newly built Huitong River, the Yuan government built the Jeju River between Xuzhou, Yanzhou and Jining, connecting Wenshui and Surabaya with the Grand Canal.
In this way, boats traveling north from Huai'an can smoothly pass through the Jeju River, the Huitong River into the Goohe River, and the Tonghui River directly to Gyeongshi.
The section of the Grand Canal from Huai'an to the south of the Guxing River and the "Jiangnan River" section south of the Yangtze River were well dredged and boats were endless, and the Yuan government did not spend much effort.
At this point, the new North-South Grand Canal from Dadu to Jining, Xuzhou, and then to Yangzhou and Hangzhou was repaired and dredged, and it became the most important inland river communication line in the Yuan Dynasty, and hundreds of thousands of stones of grain transported from this river to Dadu every year ensured the living needs of the Yuan court and the people of Dadu.
Where the canal flows, a large number of new metropolises have sprung up, industry and commerce are very developed, and cultural life is also active, which has promoted the rapid development of the eastern part of the mainland.
As a branch line, connecting line, and parallel line of the Grand Canal, in addition to the above projects, there are others. For example, on the Shandong Peninsula, the Yuan Dynasty built the Jiaozhou Canal to directly connect Jiaozhou Bay with Laizhou Bay.
However, because of the complex strata, the hard underground rock, and the limitations of the technical level and conditions at that time, it could not be dug deeply, and the passage was limited, and it did not play the expected role.
Before the opening of the Huitong River, ships from Huaijin to Huang, in order to reduce the circuitous stretch from Huaiyin to Zhongluan in Kaifeng, and avoid the difficult land transport line from Zhongluan to Jun County, once changed from the Jeju River to the Daecheong River, from Lijin to the Bohai Sea, and took the sea route to Tianjin Zhigu Port.
This inland waterway, which connects the sea and the sea, roughly acts as a water transport line that leads to the Kayu River on landing. However, due to the fact that the mouth of the Daqing River is prone to siltation, it cannot be cured, so this waterway has not played its expected role.
But its historical existence proves that the Yuan people have indeed shown incomparable wisdom and great labor in order to make full use of waterway transportation.