In the memory of history, those years of hunger and cold were like a merciless nightmare, tormenting the rich and the poor, the old and the young, and no one was spared. This is the Ding Pen Qiqi Wilderness experienced during the Guangxu period of the land of Jin and Yu, an era full of suffering and despair. At that time, the Great Qing Kingdom had gradually shaken off the haze of the Taiping Rebellion and the Sino-British naval battle, like an old man recovering from illness, shaky, but finally stable. However, before he could celebrate the return of life, fate suddenly stabbed a sharp blade at this already shaky Qing.
The drought, a disaster that should have been foreshadowed earlier, erupted in the first year of Guangxu, when rainfall in Shanxi and other places gradually decreased. Although small-scale droughts have been recorded, the Qing authorities were busy building the Beiyang Navy and did not pay enough attention to the poor harvest in some places. However, with the arrival of the second year of Guangxu, along with the scorching heat and drought, farmers began to perceive the abnormality of the environment. They were surprised to find that the bark had been almost stripped of it unknowingly. Soon, the situation deteriorated, and if unrest broke out in a certain place, the disaster would spread rapidly, and the Ding Penqi famine would also break out.
The Ding Penqi Famine, which lasted from the second year of Guangxu to the fifth year of Guangxu, from 1876 to 1879. The disaster affected 285 counties, affecting half of the nearly 200 million people, covering nine northern provinces and coastal provinces. The drought itself is not terrible, but the chain reaction it causes. This period was marked not only by outbreaks of locusts and plagues, but also by unimaginable human tragedies. The British diplomatic report recorded: "The hungry gathered to go out to hunt wild beasts and slaughter them for cooking. "There are also records that wives starved to death due to starvation, and husbands could only weep silently, fearing that they would attract other hungry people. But it was eventually discovered and became food for his population. Even, in Shanxi, whenever the wind blows, the dense clouds make people shudder.
However, the horror of this famine was not only due to natural disasters, but more from the dark reign of the last years of the Qing Dynasty. Although the Qing dynasty claimed to manage the drought, they first chose to open altars and sacrifice and pedantic prayers for rain, rather than immediately relieve the hungry. Although some relief measures were taken, such as cash-for-work and porridge factories, most of the relief materials ended up in the hands of landlords and bullies. In the early days of the drought, the rulers failed to control grain prices effectively, and the landlord compradors hoarded grain arbitrarily, hoarding it at low prices and reselling it at high prices. Moreover, before the disaster, in pursuit of self-interest, they increased taxes, forcing farmers to cultivate their land to grow domestic opium, and making there less and less land available to grow food. As a result, the food reserves of the victims were almost depleted during the harvest year. Shanxi Governor Zhang Zhidong once sighed: "Ding Peng is desolate, and its calamity is here!" ”
Although some patriotic Chinese gave generously overseas, under the bureaucratic class exploitation of the Qing Dynasty, coupled with the cost lost due to inconvenient transportation, the relief materials that eventually reached the disaster area were minimal. It is indignant that in the disaster year, the Qing still vigorously built the palace of the Western Empress Dowager and the emperor's mausoleum. Overseas luxury goods and delicacies were continuously brought into the port, and the Minister of Disaster Relief was accompanied by a large number of entourage, and the daily wine banquet decorations were extravagant, and the expenses were not less than 1,000 taels of silver. In just four years, the population of the Central Plains has decreased by 10 million.
The feudal bureaucrats of the last years of the Qing Dynasty enjoyed luxury, while foreign churches took advantage of the opportunity to buy land at low prices and issue usury debts in an attempt to control China's finances. In the end, the victims had nowhere to go, and large-scale movements such as taking the West Exit and crossing the Kanto region swept through. Although the development of remote areas was promoted for a while, it also greatly hindered the reconstruction of the disaster-stricken areas. Sometimes, the human heart is more terrible than disaster. The so-called hell is empty, and the devil is on earth.