Chapter 152: The Decline of Gaochang and ZTE (Part II)

Time goes back to when Zhang Bo first arrived in Gaochang.

"It's still very poor here, it's basically a city wall made of earth, but the sparrow's internal organs are very complete!" Zhang Bo couldn't help but sigh when he looked at this ancient and vicissitudes of life.

Ascending to the heights and looking out, the plane of Gaochang City is slightly irregular square, and the layout can be divided into three parts: the outer city, the inner city and the palace city, with a total area of about 200 hectares. The outer city wall is 12 meters thick, 11.5 meters high, and has a circumference of about 5 kilometers, and is made of rammed earth, with a rammed layer of 8-12 centimeters thick, mixed with a small amount of adobe, and a well-preserved protruding horse face on the periphery. There were three gates on the south side and two gates on each of the remaining three sides. There are twists and turns of the urn city. The inner castle is in the middle of the outer castle, the city walls are all rammed earth castles, the palace castle is in the northernmost part, the north wall of the outer castle is the north wall of the palace castle, and the north wall of the inner castle is the south wall of the palace castle.

A monastery in the southwest corner of the outer city, covering an area of nearly 10,000 square meters, is composed of a gate, a courtyard, a lecture hall, a scripture building, a main hall, and a monk's room. The temple was built for 400 years. There are also many small workshops and bazaars in the vicinity of the monastery. There is also a monastery in the southeast corner of the outer city, with a polygonal pagoda and a worship cave (Zhiti cave), which has just been built. In the middle of the northern part of the inner city, there is a small fortress with an irregular plane and a slight square, which is locally called "Khan Fort". There is a 15-meter-high rammed square tower-like building on the high platform in the north of the fort, and it was later known that it was the stupa of the royal temple; There is a double-storey building above ground and underground a little west, which is a palace imitating the official office of the Tang Dynasty. That is, the royal palace of King Gaochang.

During the Uighur kingdom of Gaochang, a variety of religions coexisted, the royal family embraced Manichaeism in the early days, and later converted to Buddhism, while most of the people converted to Buddhism, and many people believed in Nestorianism, and there were also followers of Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and shamanism. The Uighurs of Gaochang actively developed relations with the surrounding powers, and paid tribute to Liao in the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Taizu of Liao (913). In the third year of Tianzan (924), Liao Taizu marched westward, "sent troops over the quicksand, pulled out the city of Futu, and took all the western tribes". Subsequently, Liao placed the eunuch in the north court. Liao Shengzong built the city of Kedun in the north court, and the Gaochang Uighurs became the subject state of Liao (and also called the subject of the Song), and the Liao set up the Gaochang Great Palace. However, this subordinate relationship between the Uighurs and the Song and Liao was only formal, and in practice they retained their independent status.

In the past 100 years, the merchant travel of the Great Song Dynasty has been blocked by the party members of the Western Xia in the far east, and there are basically no large-scale stable and continuous commercial activities, except for a few local characteristic industries that are basically in the primitive handicraft stage.

After the settlement of the Turpan Basin by the Uighurs of Gaochang, the oasis irrigation agriculture, animal husbandry, and handicraft production that developed with the characteristics of the Western Regions have basically gotten rid of the nomadic pastoralism of the Mobei period.

In terms of agricultural production, abandon the nomadic life in the Mobei grassland in the past and mainly operate settled agriculture, real estate grains, wine, and have a long tradition in planting cotton and weaving into cloth. In agriculture, water power is used to guide the snow water on the Tianshan Mountains to irrigate the fields, and the water mill is used to facilitate grain processing, and according to local conditions, camels are used to plow the fields, and there is also a part of animal husbandry. This kind of scattered and backward agriculture simply cannot feed too many people, and the entire agricultural land in Gaochang is only 1 million mu, most of which are desertified and salinized desert soil and oasis soil with very low yield. 80% of them can only be used for grazing. The grasslands in the north with abundant water and grass basically belong to ethnic minority tribes with strong strength. Because of the backwardness of productive forces, the grasslands and forests in the northern part of the Tianshan Mountains in Urumqi were also rarely inhabited. As a result, Gaochang, which covers an area of more than one-sixth of the Great Song Dynasty, can only feed less than four million people through its agriculture.

In the handicraft industry, silk fabrics include Douluo, brocade, silk, and cooked silk. Cotton and woolen fabrics include oblique brown, white cloth, and embroidered stamen. Among the minerals is the famous sand sand, which is a kind of sodium chloride, which is an indispensable raw material for making leather. Among the iron products, the Uighurs already had iron and steel, and many of the various instruments operated by the Uighurs in the handicraft industry had to be made of steel. Although there are many kinds of goods in Gaochang, close to 1,000 kinds of goods, there are only a few domestic goods. Most of the metal products and cultural goods are imported. In particular, the ore with huge consumption needs to be imported from the Liao State and Western Xia.

In terms of commerce, it can still be seen from the frequent exchanges with Oriental commerce. The Uighurs often went to Nanjing to do business and were good at identifying treasures. He also often went to Liao Shangjing to trade, and the Liao Dynasty set up a "Uighur camp" in the southern city of Shangjing as a place of residence. It also traded with the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty. Horses were sent to Luoyang and Kaifeng in the Song Dynasty, the largest of which was the eighth year of Yuanfeng (1085), when about 240 horses were sent to Kaifeng. Another example is cotton cloth (white cloth), after the first year of Zhou Guangshun (951), a transport to Kaifeng reached 1329 sections, (the number is only a wagon, not enough for the consumption of one day in Tokyo City, a population of one million) This also shows that the inland cotton planting industry was still very underdeveloped and Gaochang's production capacity was limited. This kind of commerce is only an occasional trade in luxury goods and small smuggling in small quantities.

The majority of the people of Gaochang are Han Chinese, and although the official language and script are Uighur, the influence of traditional Han culture and Buddhism on the higher levels is also deepening. The Liao state and other neighboring states of Gaochang were very entangled in the Uighur regime.

Tibet is a plate of scattered sand, and it does not have the strength to occupy territory other than the plateau. The core of the Western Xia and Liao states was far from the Western Uighurs (the core area was several thousand miles from the border), and it was not easy for them to maintain the existing border with Gaochang due to their poor transportation and communication conditions. The power of the Black Khan and Khotan and Gaochang, which were annexed by the Black Khan in the early years, was each other. When the Black Khan occupied Khotan a hundred years ago, and his power soared, Gaochang began to slowly lose to the invasion of the Black Khan, and the border began to retreat little by little.

Fortunately, 50 years ago, the Black Khan was divided into two khanates, the Eastern Qarakhanid State and the Western Qarakhanid State, which bordered Gaochang in the east, fought to the death, and the situation began to stabilize after fighting each other. The Western Qarakhanid became a vassal of the Seljuk Turkic dynasty. The Eastern Qarakhanid was also nominally subject to the Seljuks. The border war has largely ceased.

When Zhang Bo came to Gaochang, the Western Regions region had basically entered an era of peace, and it was safer than the Liao State of the Third Senior Brother. After becoming the guest of honor of King Gaochang, Zhang Bo proposed a plan that no Gaochang person could refuse. With the annual tribute of 3 million guan of wine and jade ore and other specialties of the Great Song Dynasty, you can trade all the goods you need with the Qinghai region, which opened up trade routes. Everything should be available and in open supply. Moreover, the Great Song Dynasty regularly purchases Gaochang specialties worth at least 8 million yuan (Zhuruogan, candied fruit, cashmere, fur, leather products, gold and silver products, jade). The coins paid were enough to make the landlords of Gaochang happy, after all, the fine Song money (or Chenji money) was hard currency in all Asian countries.

This preferential trade policy is still a trade promotion plan launched by Zhang Bo in cooperation with North Mining under the premise that Gaochang has massive minerals and resources. After all, it takes a lot of money to get the job done. The partial diversion of trade profits and the dividends of Northern Mining are also considerable. Gaochang, an ancient country that believed in Buddhism, was far stronger than the bandit habit of the Western Xia in the image of the traverser and Zhang Bo, and the support of Gaochang was also in line with the western strategy of traversing the future of the traversal. The wealthy and prosperous Gaochang was also an important ally in the attack on the Black Khan and the Western Xia.

After reading Zhang Bo's report, Li Ji decided to position this only Han dominant neighbor (the Tubo and Huangtou Uighurs bordered the Great Song Dynasty after their submission) as a strategic partner, the only equal ally, (the other neighbors were colonies) and an important deployment to prevent the emergence of Western Liao in the future.

According to the statistics of Yuan You's 11th year, the price of goods in Gaochang and the bulk trade of Qingtang City in the Huangshui Valley fell by half. The productivity gains and import substitution revolutions brought about by trade and technological progress have had a profound impact on Gaochang. In just two years, Gaochang's cultivated land has doubled to 2 million mu. Grain production has increased fivefold thanks to the introduction of new varieties. The target of grain exports for food and clothing has been initially achieved.

Gaochang, which became wealthy, began to expand the Wangjia Monastery and set up Gaochang University, which was strongly recommended by Zhang Bo, and hired sages from all over the world to give lectures with high salaries. For the first time, King Gaochang, who was shocked by the strong national power of the Great Song Dynasty, personally went to Tokyo to pay tribute. This action also made the Great Song Dynasty court and the traversing people very satisfied, and Zhang Bo became a new star far beyond the senior brothers.

Through a great deal of diplomacy, King Gaochang obtained a large number of medical and construction talents from Tokyo under the guidance of Zhang Bo, and asked these high-paid talents to go to Gaochang to help establish a complete medical and road and agricultural irrigation system.

This requirement of self-hematopoiesis also gave the traversal a new understanding of Zhang Bo's pattern. Compared with the behavior of the senior brothers who constantly ask for funds and blood transfusions, Zhang Bo seems to be the same kind of person in the eyes of the public. Although the practice of the senior brothers will also produce huge economic benefits and strategic advantages in the later stage, the huge investment in the early stage (infrastructure, city construction, and port construction are all large investments and slow results) and small poor trade income are overshadowed by Zhang Bo's direct national level to engage in complementary bulk foreign trade.

They are all engaged in commodity dumping, resource plundering, and market occupation, the same infrastructure construction, the same assimilation education to cultivate pro-China factions, and the same support for the agent and comprador class. In this way, it is natural to pass through the green eyes.

Zhang Bo also carried out large-scale publicity, touring cities throughout Gaochang to hold Dharma meetings to publicize Zen Buddhism in the Han region, carry out Buddhist knowledge popularization activities, and at the same time carry out charitable relief activities. Zhang Bo's beautiful words began to circulate in various parts of Gaochang, and Zhang Bo was boasted as a god, as if he was the god of wealth who had countless money to distribute to the poor and the god of medicine with profound Buddhism. In fact, it is the use of demolition and reconstruction, so that the residents of the shantytowns live in brick houses, and the capital generated by the appreciation of the land is loaned to the poor to find jobs. A large number of employment gaps emerged just after Gaochang's economy took off. As for the medical skills, it is nothing more than a cheap supply of the most common Chinese patent medicine or potion in the desert area to prevent heat stroke and antipyretic poison caused by misunderstanding.

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