The "History of Song" records that Fan Ruoshui was an ordinary scholar during the Southern Tang Dynasty. At that time, the Southern Tang was politically corrupt and the people's livelihood was deteriorating, but a person with great ambitions like Fan Ruoshui was not appointed, and he could not even pass the Jin Shi exam, and he was very depressed. He heard that Zhao Kuangyin, who rose in the north, had great talents and was looking for talents, so he had the idea of defecting.
A few months later, Fan Ruoshui abandoned his family and business, trekked through mountains and rivers, ran to Kaifeng, the capital of the Great Song Dynasty, and then delivered a cover letter directly to the palace. Zhao Kuangyin, who read the cover letter, actually laughed up to the sky and shouted: "Nantang Li Yu Xiaoer, it has been put into my bag." And clapped in front of hundreds of civil and military officials: "Talent is rare, this person is reused!" ”
And Fan Ruoshui's life also soared - he was first chartered to take the entrance examination, then he was promoted to the military officer of Shuzhou, and soon after his arrival, he was promoted to the crown prince Youzanshan Daifu.
Fan Ruoshui's steady steps attracted the envy and jealousy of other officials, and a letter of impeachment criticism was submitted to Zhao Kuangyin's desk.
In November of the eighth year of Kaibao (975), the Great Song army, under the command of Fan Ruoshui, crossed the Yangtze River Heavenly Graben, smashed the Yellow Dragon, and captured Li Yu, the lord of the Southern Tang state.
Photo / Li Qing
It turned out that when Fan Ruoshui decided to defect, he wanted to give Zhao Kuangyin an extraordinary meeting gift. After careful consideration, he believed that the reason why the Great Song Dynasty could not attack the Southern Tang for a long time was by no means a military reason, and the mighty Yangtze River barrier was the biggest obstacle for the Song army. Fan Ruoshui knows the art of war quite well, and has read a lot of classics on geography and water conservancy, plus he has lived on the Yangtze River for a long time and knows all about the ferries, checkpoints, fortresses, etc. of the Yangtze River, so he decided to help Zhao Kuangyin build a pontoon bridge.
In those days, it was not an easy task to erect a pontoon bridge over the vast river. In addition to technology, there must also be sufficient material security. One of the most important is to obtain the exact width of the river surface in order to prepare the materials for the bridge in a targeted manner and build the fixed facilities of the pontoon bridge on the shore. In order to hide people's eyes and ears and facilitate investigation and measurement, Fan Ruoshui was introduced to Guangji Temple, which has geographical advantages, and became a monk.
At the first opportunity, he came to the edge of Umizhu Isoto to inspect the terrain, and secretly drew drawings and marked them. In order to get accurate figures on the width of the Yangtze River, he often rowed small boats and long silk ropes in the name of fishing, and tirelessly traveled back and forth on the quarrying surface for months, repeatedly measuring.
Source: Panorama Vision
In order to fix the pontoon bridge to be built, Fan Ruoshui donated a large amount of money to Guangji Temple, suggesting that the temple use this money to carve out stone caves at the riverside of Niuzhu Mountain to enshrine Buddha statues, nominally to bless passing ships safely, but in fact to prepare for the Song army to cross the river in the future.
His strategy of "inviting floating beams to help the master" and the carefully drawn technical report "Hengjiang Tushuo", which can be called a new era of human bridge engineering, amazed Song Taizu. The letters not only contain detailed construction plans and exquisite designs, but also the depth of water lines on the quarrying river. Almost every word was obtained by risking his death to survey the river back and forth. Fan Ruoshui is also known as the inventor and creator of the first bridge over the Yangtze River in Chinese history.
Source: Focus Creative
Author: Yang Mei. Excerpted from The Reader Magazine, Issue 20, 2023.
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