Chapter 146: Qu Yuan Plow
The plough of the Han Dynasty has been basically fixed, but the plough of the Han Dynasty is a long straight plough, and the turning of the plough is not flexible enough when ploughing the land, and the soil is laborious and the efficiency is not very high. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
Jia Siqian of the Northern Wei Dynasty mentioned the long curved plough and the "Wei plough" in the "Qi Min Yaoshu", but due to the unknown records, it can only be speculated that it is a short plough; At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the long curved plough further appeared.
But whether it is a long curved plough or a blue plow, it is not the best form of plough.
It was not until the end of the Tang Dynasty that the Jiangdong plough appeared in the south of the Yangtze River, and the structure of the plough was brought into full play, which was praised by later generations.
The advantage of the curved plough is that the plough body can swing during operation, which is full of mobility, easy to plough, and light and soft, which is conducive to rotation, saves manpower and livestock, and has become a sign of the maturity of farming tools in ancient Z country.
Li Yu had seen this kind of curved plough that had been used for thousands of years in the countryside when he was a child in his previous life, and he painted it with a gourd.
With thousands of skilled craftsmen in the Yanwang Mansion, in just a few days, a complete Quyuan plow was placed in front of Li Yu.
Li Yu immediately ordered Cao Cao, who was in charge of craftsmen and engineering construction in Yanwangfu, to participate in the military Zhang Renjun (also the capital of the palace Shicao), organized craftsmen to step up the manufacture of Quyuan plows, and planned to promote it in the whole of Andong.
However, in the end, because Li Yu's stall in Anton was too large and occupied too many craftsmen, resulting in a shortage of manpower, the production of Quyuan plough could not keep up with the resettlement speed of immigrants, and each household could not be assigned a handful.
Li Yu also wanted to engage in the invention of the Tang Dynasty for carrying water for irrigation, but Andong's annual precipitation was stable, the river system was developed, and the irrigation tools were completely useless, so he had to do it.
Anton, that is, the Northeast in later generations, has ever heard of the outbreak of a large-scale flood and drought locust plague from history to the present?
No!
Whether in his previous life or in the present day, Li Yu couldn't understand why the Han and Tang dynasties paid so little attention to the Northeast region. That's why the winters are long and cold? But in fact, the grain produced in the short summer here has also become a granary.
Xianbei, Khitan, Jurchen, Mongolian, and Manchu all came from here, except for the Mengyuan and Yuan, the other four ethnic groups all controlled China according to Liaodong.
Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Qin Emperor and the Han Dynasty, the vision of the rulers of successive dynasties has become more and more short-sighted.
It is better to keep the people firmly on the land, and in the event of a famine, they will either wait for death or a peasant uprising will break out. He also did not want to use the power of the state to move them to a vast and sparsely populated land like the Northeast.
If this is done, it will not only calm the unstable situation in the country, but also increase the amount of land to be reclaimed, obtain new tax and grain areas, and consolidate the frontier.
It is a pity that in the past dynasties, except for the founding period of the People's Republic of China, when the state forced immigration to the border areas in order to stick to the frontier, there has not been a single time when immigration has been carried out under the prominent contradiction between man and land to alleviate domestic contradictions.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, whether it was Hexi, Liaodong or south of the Huai River in the Qinling Mountains, it was a typical land with vast and sparse population, and the land was fertile. But after decades, both the emperor and the courtiers watched the country unable to survive due to the country's population growth and the annexation of land by the magnates, but no one proposed to move a large number of landless and poor people in the north to a vast and sparsely populated land to alleviate the contradictions, and watched the empire collapse.
As a result, the Tang Dynasty followed in the footsteps of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the peasant uprising in the Central Plains was suppressed, but it was like the Eastern Han Dynasty rising together, and the feudal towns eventually got out of control.
Historically, the large-scale southward migration of the Chinese was not led by the government, and it was only because of the war in the north that they spontaneously moved south to the south of the Yangtze River, completely turning the land of Baiyue annexed by the Qin Emperor into China.
Li Yu often lamented the ignorance and short-sightedness of the rulers of the previous dynasties, and allowed the northeast region to rise up twice to destroy China, and three times to poison the foreign forces in the north.
Fortunately, the barbarians in the land of Lingnan are inferior to the Chinese in terms of physique, their combat effectiveness is not strong, and they have never produced any great characters, and they live separately from each other among the mountains.
Otherwise, with the urine of the rulers of the previous dynasties, the southern barbarians may have to threaten the survival of China like the northern Hulu.
Three hundred acres of land is not a small area. Zheng Cheng and his wife Zhang's work at sunrise and rest at sunset, and only four or five acres of land have been cultivated in a few days, and people are still tired and have back pain.
"Is Zheng Cheng at home?"
"Yes."
Zheng Cheng, who was resting at home, heard someone shouting and ran out of the room, and saw that it was his neighbor Wang Liang who was visiting, and hurriedly invited him into the house to sit.
Wang Liangren is honest and sturdy, and his cross-ear beard looks a little fierce, but he is very helpful and has a good relationship with Zheng Cheng's family.
"Brother Zheng Cheng, there are hundreds of acres at home, and there is no plough to plough with oxen, so it is not a way to rely on your hands to get it out. It's only been a few days, and my family is so tired that I'm panting! ”
Zheng Cheng nodded in agreement: "Relying on the hoe in my hand to make out hundreds of acres of land that I don't know how many years have been wasted, not to mention tired, I don't know how long it will take, it will be a problem to miss the sowing season and autumn harvest for a long time." The government said that it only gave each family a free ration before the autumn harvest, and after the autumn harvest, they spent money to buy it when there was no food. The cattle in the family are still on credit from the government. ”
Li Yu ordered the Duhufu to issue a ploughing ox to each immigrant household, but it was clear that it was illegal to kill cattle, and the offender would be reduced to slave labor; If the cattle are lost, they will compensate for the loss of the metropolitan protection government according to twice the price of the cattle, and will never provide them with the policy of benefiting the people of the metropolitan protection government.
"I thought, when the twenty plows in the village are wheeled to us, we don't know when, we two families simply make their own plows and use them, anyway, there are oxen, and the plough doesn't need to be as good as the one issued by the government."
Wang Liang asked, "Brother, what do you think?" ”
"My brother is right, I happen to be able to do carpentry. In the past two days, we will stop what we are doing and make a plow ourselves. Zheng Chengjue's Wang Liang had a good idea, so he agreed.
"It's just that the plough is not good!"
Wang Liang snapped his chest and smiled: "Brother, I used to strike iron in my hometown, and this matter is difficult for me." As for the iron needed, brother, let me tell you, when my family was fishing in the west ravine, he found a lot of discarded weapons in the grass, which is estimated to have been discarded in the war here a few years ago. With this iron, I can build a stove at home, and I can make these broken weapons into plowshares. Brother, you just need to make the wooden body of the plough."
"That's no problem, I'll go to the mountains and chop some wood today." Zheng Cheng said with a happy face.
With a plow, you only need to cut down the small trees in the field, and you can directly use the ox to pull the plow to turn over the land, without having to work as hard as now.
After the two discussed it, they began to prepare the tools needed to make the plow.
Zheng Cheng cut down four thigh-thick trees at the bottom of the mountain and carried them home with his wife. Since he did not have the set of tools required by carpenters, Zheng Cheng also got rid of a few small iron pieces such as saws and chisels from Wang Liang, who had built a good stove, and began to make wooden parts of plows after making tools.
Zheng Cheng has also seen the Quyuan plow issued by the government, and it is indeed much easier to use than the long straight plow used in his hometown. It's just that the tools are simple, the carpentry work is not very precise, and the curved plough made is very rough.
After a few days of crackling and banging at home, Wang Liang melted more than a dozen tattered knives and spear heads to make a plowshare.
The two worked together to build an ugly-looking curved plow, for which the two families also got together to celebrate.
After a few days, the second one, Wang Liang and Zheng Cheng, one by one, put the Quyuan plough on their own cattle and ploughed the field comfortably.
This made dozens of other families in the village who did not have a quyuan plow look envious and jealous, and they came to the door to beg for a plow.
The immigrants themselves are the original victims, and there are few eldest sons in the family, and it is impossible for the Metropolitan Protectorate to send money to the immigrants.
The villagers who begged for help were embarrassed to beg for ploughs, but they had no money, so they had to take the fish caught by their families in the river and the game they set up in the mountains in exchange for the wood and iron they needed.
There are several battlefields in this area that are more than ten years old, and it is not a problem to run to find some tattered weapons on your own.
The wild things in the Andong area are easy to be abundant, and there is still an article in the northeast about how the wild things of the Great Northern Wilderness are rich when the country Z was just liberated. Not to mention the early Tang Dynasty, which had a small population, and Liaodong, which had experienced many years of war.
Wang Liang and Zheng Cheng ploughed the fields during the day, and at night they had more work to plow for the villagers, and when they came back from the villagers for some food, the living standards of the two families improved a lot, and stimulated several other families in the same village who had crafts to start plowing.
Cui Rong was appointed as the county magistrate of Dushan County, and the Metropolitan Protectorate attached great importance to spring ploughing, so he personally went to the villages of the county to inspect the spring plowing and sowing situation.
At the age of eighteen, he was awarded the county order, and when he returned to the Central Plains, he didn't know how many young talents would be envied. Cui Rong is also high-spirited, ready to make some political achievements in Dushan County, which will be appreciated by King Yan and then promoted, so as to decide the major policies of the imperial court and show his heart to govern the country and secure the people.
Today, I happened to look for Bing Village in Xishan Township, and when I arrived at the field, Cui Rong was greatly surprised that 80 percent of the 10,000 acres of wasteland owned by Bing Village had been sown by ploughing within half a month.
Cui Rong looked all the way, the county seat and the east and west townships, each village can have forty percent of the wasteland ploughing and sowing, it would be good, I didn't expect the speed of C Village to be so fast, I have to go to the village to ask, to see what experience to promote other villages in the county.
"Are you saying that Wang Liang and Zheng Cheng of this village helped the villagers make Quyuan plows, and now every household has a Quyuan plow?"
"Exactly!" Bingcun Village is a 50-year-old gentleman who can read and write and be upright, and told Cui Rong, who came to inquire about the reason, the reason for the rapid cultivation of land in the village.
"Where did the plough iron come from?" The government only issued farm tools to the people, and it was impossible for the peasants to melt the farm tools to make ploughs, Cui Rong was puzzled.
"There is a battlefield in the west of this village, and the iron tools were picked up from there."
"No wonder!" Cui Rong said suddenly, and then his face was happy: "Urging the villagers who lack ploughs to make Quyuan plows by themselves, doesn't it solve the problem of insufficient Quyuan plows in the Duhu Mansion?" Spring ploughing can also be cultivated faster, and the government only needs to provide iron materials to the people. ”
"No, I hurriedly went back to my house to write a recital, reported it to His Royal Highness King Yan, and suggested that this policy be promoted in all counties."
Cui Rong got on the horse and hurried back to the county government non-stop, leaving the village with an inexplicable face.