The first legitimate son of the Tang Dynasty

Chapter 258: Water shortage in Guanzhong
The spring plowing of the Tang Dynasty has begun. Li An's Qu Yuan plow has really played a vital role. This time, the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty has produced a lot of Qu Yuan plows and distributed them. Among them, Li An donated 30 yuan. Such a charitable act It was also widely publicized.

With the help of the Quyuan plow, nearly 30 acres more arable land was plowed during spring plowing. Originally, the extra 30 acres of arable land was a good thing. After all, who would dislike such a large amount of arable land.

You must know that what the people of the Tang Dynasty lacked was land.

At the beginning of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, the rulers learned the lessons of the demise of the Sui Dynasty and realized the great impact of peasant uprisings on rule. Therefore, the rulers of the Tang Dynasty adopted a policy of appeasing and co-opting farmers, which was the most important means of production for farmers. Land, implement the "equal land system".

The so-called land equalization system is to "distribute land according to head." Except for women, tribesmen, and slaves, everyone else, old and young, can be allocated a certain amount of land. The purpose of the land equalization system is to suppress the excessive intensification of land, so that Most people can own land. Although it still contains unequal factors such as gender and class, in general, the original intention of the equalization system is still good.

However, the effect of policy implementation is not solely determined by the subjective will of the ruler, otherwise there would not be so many examples of obedience and disobedience.

After the implementation of the land equalization system, the population of the Tang Dynasty increased greatly after the early period of recuperation. The Tang court was faced with the problem of insufficient land allocation. In addition, land annexation resurfaced, and many farmers were forced to part with their land and became refugees.

At the same time, a large number of farmers lost their land and were forced to wander. However, some farmers retained their land, but abandoned their land and fled because they could not bear the heavy taxes.

The main income of the feudal dynasty was taxes, and farmers were the main tax targets.In a good harvest year, they can still be full, but once they encounter a bad harvest year, the farmer's burden will be very heavy. Food and drink for the family will be a problem, and they can only run away as a last resort.The psychology can be summarized as "the ignorant people in the countryside regard having fields as a disaster". If one household runs away, its relatives will be affected, so there is a phenomenon of group running away.

While Wei was trying to prevent these phenomena from happening, Li An believed that there was too little land, and secondly, the land occupation by aristocratic families was too serious. Li An offered the Quyuan plow to increase the Tang Dynasty's land.

This is a good intention and a good thing, but what Li An didn't expect was that after the land grew, the water in Guanzhong began to be unbearable, although Chang'an has the reputation of being surrounded by eight waters.

But the water shortage in Guanzhong is an indisputable fact.

There are 8 rivers around Chang'an, including Wei, Jing, Feng, Lao, Jian, Pou, Chan, and Ba. Therefore, not only can the city be built here, but many surrounding facilities necessary for large cities can also be built.

For example, agriculture that supports a large population is most suitable close to the city itself.It can be easily retrieved and save transportation costs, and it can also allow urban garrison to protect the farmland itself.

Then why is there a shortage of water again? That's because water can carry a boat and also capsize it.

Chang'an's ultimate decline was also due to the overdeveloped water system, which affected the quality of the city's own groundwater.

As early as the late Northern Dynasties, Yang Jian, who successfully usurped the throne, discovered that the environment near the old Chang'an City was quite bad.Several large-scale expansions since the Qin and Han Dynasties have caused an accumulation effect of domestic waste in different eras.

This situation had already emerged during the Han Dynasty, but it was ignored because the Eastern Han Dynasty moved the capital to Luoyang.

After experiencing the troubled times of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, when the Yang family was preparing to rebuild the great empire, they realized how terrible the situation was.

The groundwater that urban residents rely on to dig wells has deteriorated due to a large amount of pollution and cannot be used for human consumption at all.This forced Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty to decide to build a new city in Shouyuan, southeast of the old city.Later, the medieval Xi'an, named Daxing, became the last witness of the glorious history of Guanzhong.

Of course, changing places does not mean solving the root of the problem.By the Tang Dynasty, groundwater pollution in urban areas resurfaced, and it was even more serious than before.This is because groundwater systems in an area are often interconnected and carry wastewater to a larger area.

The scale of the city of Xi'an in the Tang Dynasty reached its historical peak, and its sewage discharge was also unprecedented and rarely the latter.Until the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, more than half of the wells in the city could only drink salt water.

Some people say that if the water is polluted, you can still irrigate the fields. It is true, but there are millions of people in Chang'an, and it is impossible to use well water to irrigate the fields. If the good water from outside enters Chang'an, you cannot use it to irrigate the fields.

In addition, Chang'an has geographical problems. The northwest region is deep inland and far away from the sea. In addition, the high plateau and mountainous terrain block the flow of moist air, resulting in scarce precipitation and arid climate in this area, forming vast deserts and Gobi. Beach landscape.

In the western region, only a few areas in the southeast have a temperate monsoon climate, and most of the other areas have a temperate continental climate and alpine climate, with severe cold and dry winters, high temperatures in summers, and little precipitation, showing a decreasing trend from east to west.

Among them, the annual precipitation in the Loess Plateau is between 300 and 500 mm, in the Qaidam Basin it is less than 200 mm, in the Hexi Corridor less than 100 mm, in Dunhuang only 29.5 mm, in Turpan less than 20 mm, in Ruoqiang 10.9 mm, and there is almost no rain all year round.Due to scarce precipitation, arid climate, and widespread deserts, the surface water volume in the northwest region is about 2200 billion cubic meters per year, accounting for only about 8% of the country's total runoff.

Therefore, the water shortage in Chang'an is still very serious. Now that there are more than 30 acres of fields suddenly added, watering has become a big problem. The spring rain in March is as expensive as oil, but after the spring plowing is over, these three The spring rain of the month has not come.

The people in Guanzhong panicked. If there is no water, how can they live on the land they just planted? Then a battle for water began.

In ancient times, there were many things about fighting over water. The Tang Dynasty was so long ago that such things were not recorded, but in the Qing Dynasty, such records were everywhere.

Later, Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty received an urgent report. Due to water shortage in two villages in Guanzhong, the village in the upper reaches began to build embankments and store water. However, as long as you store water in the upper reaches, there will be no drop of water in the lower reaches, and the villages in the lower reaches will All we can do is wait for death, what to do now?
Then the fight started directly. Many people from the lower reaches rushed towards the villagers upstream. The villagers held shovels and long sticks and started fighting with each other.

The fight became more and more serious due to the participation of several martial arts practitioners in the downstream village.The people in the upper reaches who were attacked also united with the martial arts practitioners in the distance, and finally the two sides got into a fight.

In the chaos, there was a group of people passing by accidentally, but they were mistaken for people from the government.After the melee between the two sides, they also launched an attack.

48 people died in this battle, which can be said to be a heavy loss.

When Li Shimin saw this report, he was at a loss for a while, because there would only be more and more things like this.

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(End of this chapter)