The situation in the world depends on the mountains and rivers, and the mountains and rivers are related to the capital. However, without archaeology, there is no way to see the changes due to the revolution. Without a comprehensive source committee, there is no way to understand the whole situation.

Xie Baoshu felt that the gods of mountains, rivers and rivers in the world should be in their fiefdoms at this time to pray for the Tang Dynasty.

The mountains and rivers are beautiful, and one of the most critical links is the artificial canal.

Compared with the natural existence of rivers, artificially dug canals played a more important role in the production and life of ancient human beings. In addition to shipping, canals are also used for irrigation, flood distribution, drainage, water supply, etc. It can even be said that the history of social development, to a large extent, can be regarded as the history of the ancestors' continuous expansion, connection, and guidance of natural water systems and the transformation of nature by digging canals to connect the four seas.

Compared with land transportation, waterway transportation has obvious advantages: large volume, low cost, low loss, and high stability...... However, the course of natural rivers cannot be transferred by human will, and they are often affected by topography, and it is difficult to connect with each other.

The effectiveness of waterway transport is very limited by natural waterways alone. It is only by digging canals and connecting rivers that the power of water transport can be truly unleashed. Therefore, the canal can be said to be a "lifeline" for ancient societies, especially for a vast society like China.

The oldest existing artificial canal in China is the Xu River in Suzhou City, which is still running one after another, just like in the past.

In the more than 1,000 years before the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the ancestors of China have dug many regional canals on the land of China, which are like scattered pieces of a grand puzzle until that special node in history, one by one, and finally converge into this unique and magnificent world cultural heritage in the history of the world, the Sui-Tang Grand Canal.

The Chinese and Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi has a poem "Sauvignon Blanc":

Bianshui flows, Surabaya flows, and flows to Guazhou Gudutou. Wu Shan was a little worried.

Thinking about it, hating it, hating it until it is time to return. The moonlight people leaned on the building.

This poem is Bai Juyi's twilight years, after a stroke, he couldn't bear to delay the young Ai Ji Fan Su, and sent him back to the south. Several geographical concepts that appear in the poem - Bianshui, Surabaya, Guazhou, and Wushan are exactly the routes that Fan Sunan should take.

Bianshui originates in Xingyang, Henan Province, flows east from Kaifeng to Xuzhou, joins Surabaya, crosses the Yangtze River through Guazhou on the south bank of Yangzhou, Jiangsu, and goes straight down to Yuhang along the Jiangnan Canal.

This route is the Sui and Tang Dynasty Grand Canal (hereinafter referred to as the "Grand Canal") ordered by Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty. The appearance of this Grand Canal is groundbreaking in the history of China and even the world, and it has set at least the following records.

According to the "Miscellaneous Records of the Great Cause", only one section of the Jiqu was opened, that is, "more than 100,000 men and women in the counties of Henan, and the 14th Five-Year Plan for the deceased servants". The speed of construction is unprecedented in human history. But this is also the most controversial aspect of the Grand Canal and its presiding builder, Emperor Yang of Sui.

In the Sui Dynasty, a unified dynasty after the turmoil of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there were only two masters, Emperor Liwen and Emperor Yang, but both father and son were masters of canals.

Emperor Wen dug the Guangtong Canal from Chang'an to the Yellow River through Tongguan along the old road of the Han Groove Canal, which is about 300 kilometers long

Emperor Yang led the construction of the main body of the Grand Canal, which is in the shape of a "human" from the map. Taking Luoyang, the capital of Sui, as the starting point of the word "people", the Tongji Canal connects the Huanghuai River to the south, and the Yongji Canal connects the Yellow River and the Haihe River to the north, which are respectively used as the apostrophe of the word "people", and further connects to the Hangou and Jiangnan Canal to the south to reach the bank of the Qiantang River.

As far as the Grand Canal is concerned, the contribution of Emperor Yang of Sui is commendable. However, this must be based on a common sense perception:

Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty made more contributions to connecting, widening, and connecting the regional artificial canals and natural rivers built by successive dynasties for thousands of years since the Spring and Autumn Period, rather than building such a huge basic water conservancy project by himself. There is no doubt that the Grand Canal is the crystallization of the common wisdom and hard work of the working people for thousands of years in ancient times.

Why was it Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty? Why did such an epic project as the Grand Canal appear as late as the Sui Dynasty? In order to understand this question, we need to broaden our field of vision.

During the more than 1,000 years from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Sui Dynasty, the time for real unification was actually only more than 400 years between the Qin and Han dynasties, and the remaining two-thirds of the time was divided and divided into territories. The completion of a national water conservancy project such as the Grand Canal requires three resources: a strong national will, sufficient human scale, and strong economic power, so it must rely on a strong and unified dynasty to do so.

In the previous unified dynasty, the Qin Dynasty was too short, and in the era of the First Emperor, the Great Wall and the Qin Straight Road were first built (these two projects, the urgency and benefits brought by the completion of these two projects were far greater than the development of the Central Plains Water Conservancy Canal Project; secondly, the regional canals we talked about earlier had not yet appeared, and without these basic conditions, talking about the canal project at the national level was like a castle in the air.

During the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty, due to various rigid constraints such as the low level of development of social productive forces, the insufficient population size, and the serious lag in the development degree of the southern region, the national level did not have the strength and motivation to develop such a large-scale project. Therefore, in the Han and Han dynasties, it was common to build core projects in key locations, such as the trough canal from Chang'an to Tongguan, the rebuilding of the ditch to open up the Jianghuai water transport, and a series of regional canal projects in North China during the Cao Wei period in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

The heavy responsibility of history has gone through thousands of years, and finally handed over to the rulers of the Sui Dynasty who reunited themselves, or more precisely, to the hands of Emperor Yang of Sui.

Yang Guang, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, in the pen of later historians since the Tang Dynasty, is undoubtedly an image of a ruined country, ruined family, and debauchery and tyranny. But only in terms of talent, courage, literary and martial arts, and strategic vision, Emperor Yang of Sui was not useless.

The ruling class of the Sui and Tang dynasties were all from the Guanlong military group of the Western Wei Dynasty, and Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty and Li Yuan, the ancestor of the Tang Dynasty, were cousins.

Emperor Yang received a systematic and strict cultural education since he was a child, and his history records his "less sensitive and wise, beautiful posture". "Quan Sui Poems" has nearly 50 poems handed down. The words are magnificent and open-minded, with the style of Wei Wu, and the literary circles of later generations have a very high evaluation of his poems: "Mixing the north and the south, the talent of the emperor, is really high." ”

In the fourteenth year of the Great Cause, Emperor Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty was hanged to death by Yu Culture and Mutiny in Jiangdu, no

The Jiu Sui Dynasty fell. Later generations talked about Yang Guang's death and the destruction of the country, and the construction of the Grand Canal has always been regarded as one of his most important "crimes".

But if you think about it carefully, Emperor Yang took such a big risk to build the Grand Canal, is there really no more far-reaching consideration?

Ten years after Ping Chen, he sat in Yangzhou, led the affairs of Jiangnan, and read countless beautiful scenery of Huaiyang beauties, Jiangnan was not so attractive to him at this level. But on another level, Jiangnan really made Emperor Yang "haunted by dreams".

Those ten years gave Emperor Yang first-hand experience, and he deeply understood that after nearly 300 years of governance in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasties, Jiangnan was rich and prosperous. This is also the key reason why he chose to open the Jiqu Canal and Shanyang Desecration as soon as possible in the construction of the Grand Canal after his accession to the throne. In the ten years after the destruction of Chen, the local gate forces in the south of the Yangtze River launched two large-scale rebellions, and the Sui Dynasty was unable to deliver the counterinsurgency forces in time due to the lack of suitable transportation channels in the process of counterinsurgency, which also made Emperor Yang determined to open up this channel.

However, for Emperor Yang of Sui, who was born in Guanlong aristocracy and had the unique temperament of "Xianbei Han Chinese", Jiangnan was, after all, only a corner of the world; his real strategic vision was not limited to the Chinese territory, but also looked at the neighbors of the Chinese territory from a very high strategic height.

At that time, the Turks were rising in the Mongolian steppes and Central Asian steppes in the north, and their strength was extremely strong; the Khitan and Korean Peninsula forces in the east were also watching the vast world in the northeast, the most direct example was that Goguryeo sent 40,000 troops to attack Liaoxi, and the Tuyuhun in the west, which occupied the border of present-day Qinghai and Gansu, would be cut off from the Silk Road passage of the Hexi Corridor together with the Turks, and the result would be that the entire Western Regions would be stripped out of the Chinese territory.

As a result, the strategic national policy formulated by Emperor Yang can be summed up in four words: attacking the west and defending the east.

The westward offensive contains two specific policies: repair the Turks and eliminate Tuyuhun, that is, one pull and one dozen. The reason for the Tuyuhun is even simpler: the Turks are so powerful that they cannot be defeated for the time being; the reason for fighting Tuyuhun is even simpler, it is the softest in a few persimmons, and the position it occupies is the most threatening, lying directly on the side of the Hexi Corridor, if it is not eliminated, the Silk Road will be cut off, and the national capital Chang'an will never have a day to sleep.

Defending the east is a strategic defense, and after the western issue is resolved, it will turn back to deal with the Khitan and Korean Peninsula forces in the east.

In order to realize such a strategic plan, it must be built on one foundation: the Sui Dynasty must have the ability to unleash the full potential of the Central Plains. Under the transportation conditions of the time, there was only one possibility to achieve this: the construction of a nationwide canal system would have the ability to concentrate the people, money, and goods of the empire on a single point and maximize its efficiency.

This is the essential reason why Emperor Yang of Sui immediately began the Grand Canal project as soon as he took over.

The canal is also successful, and the canal is also defeated.

The construction of the canal system made the power of the Sui Dynasty like an arrow full of strings, and the strategic plan of Emperor Yang began to be implemented. After the completion of the Yongji Canal, the Tongji Canal and the Shanyang Canal, Emperor Yang personally conquered Tugu and destroyed his country. And then it took half a year, through thousands of dangers to patrol the Silk Road, across the Qilian Mountains to Zhangye, the 27th Western Regions

The state sent an envoy to the audience.

Shi Zai: "Breaking the Tugu Hun and expanding the land for thousands of miles...... Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are lost, and the vassals are subdued, and the tributes are paid one after another. In this battle, the vast land from the east bank of Qinghai Lake in the east, to the Tarim Basin in the west, the Kuruktag Mountains in the north, and the Kunlun Mountains in the south were all in the bag, and four counties such as Xihai and Heyuan were set up and returned to Wang Zhi. Tang Taizong once sighed to his subordinates about Emperor Yang of Sui's western tour: "At the beginning of the great cause, the Sui lord entered the Turkic realm, and the strength of soldiers and horses was only one or two generations since ancient times. ”

After the Grand Canal was completed, Emperor Yang of Sui conquered Goguryeo three times in three consecutive years. History records its first expedition: "The army is gathered in Zhuo County...... One hundred and thirty-three thousand eight hundred in total, two million, and its feeders were multiplied...... In ancient times, there was no such thing. "The majestic division is mighty, but such a majestic scene also hides the shadow of crisis.

You must know that the three expeditions to Goryeo were carried out at the time of the construction of the new capital Luoyang, the opening of the Grand Canal, the construction of the Sui Straight Road, the opening of the Taihang Mountain Pass and many other national projects, and "sent the people south of the river and Huai and the ships to transport Liyang and Luokou Zhucang rice to Zhuo County, and the ships were more than 1,000 miles." ”

It is really unimaginable that such a vain waste of people's manpower, the use of millions of soldiers, and the war of thousands of miles should be fought three times in a row. "The Book of Sui and Emperor Yang" contains the tragic situation of the people at that time: "At that time, the soldiers and feeders of Liaodong filled the road, day and night, and the hard laborers began to be group thieves. ”

"The success is also the canal, and the defeat is also the canal".

Although the opening of the Grand Canal laid the foundation for Emperor Yang of Sui to realize his established strategic plan, the long-term exhaustion of popular forces, coupled with his efforts to bring the Central Plains and Jiangnan scholars into the ruling class, inevitably infringed on the interests of the ruling Guanlong clique itself. As a result, Emperor Yang of Sui's actions around the Grand Canal made him almost stand in opposition to everyone. The loss of popular support and the support of the ruling clique was at the heart of the Sui Dynasty's rapid collapse in the midst of affluence.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Sui Dynasty was rich. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty had a great cause of five years, with 8,907,536 households and 4,6019,956 mouths. This record was not surpassed until the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty later in the reign of Tianbao. The economy and society were as prosperous as the Northern Song Dynasty, and the peak of population in the end was not too similar to that of the Sui Dynasty.

With the completion of the Grand Canal, dozens of national granaries have been built along the route, such as Liyang Warehouse, Huiluo Warehouse, Hanjia Warehouse, Heyang Warehouse, Changping Warehouse, Shanyang Warehouse, etc., which are used to store Jianghuai grain and rice transshipped through the Grand Canal. The core of China's more than 2,000 years of ancient Chinese history, which has supported its formation and continuous development, is nothing more than four pillars: the county system, the imperial examination system, the Great Wall, and the Grand Canal.

The county system ensured that the territory of China could be managed by a unified central government and provided an institutional guarantee for the effective use of the country's potential; the imperial examination system ensured a certain degree of mobility between classes, delaying the rapid accumulation of class contradictions and the irreconcilable situation.

The existence of the Great Wall enables the military defense forces in the north to concentrate on a few key nodes for effective defense, rather than being scattered and powerless for thousands of miles of fortification; the Grand Canal is the main artery of the country, ensuring the efficient accumulation of various resources and the ability to deal with it

Provide realistic guarantees for any emergencies at the national level.

Coincidentally, the fates of the two emperors who set up these four pillars are so similar, they are like meteors in the long night of history, but they have left assets for future generations to influence the trend of thousands of years.

The core section of the Sui-Tang Grand Canal, due to the water from the Yellow River, from the Sui to the Southern Song Dynasty for more than 500 years, the river carried a large amount of sediment, and the waterways such as the chasm, Bianshui, Luoshui, and Jishui were silted up and flooded countless times.

The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is a north-south artificial canal, connecting the Haihe River, the Yellow River, the Huai River, the Yangtze River and the Qiantang River.

So, how did the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal be built, and how did the imperial waterway of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty take a dragon boat to tour the south turn into a golden waterway where commercial transportation flourished? Why did the transportation of the Grand Canal become the economic lifeline of the imperial court? In order to ensure the smooth flow of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the safety of the transportation, how did the successive dynasties organize and manage the transportation of the Grand Canal?

The golden waterway has been built for thousands of years.

The opening of the Grand Canal can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period more than 2,000 years ago. In the thirty-fourth year of King Jing of Zhou, that is, in 486 BC, Wu Wangfu sent troops to the north to attack Qi in order to dominate the Central Plains. At that time, there was no waterway between the Yangtze River and the Huai River.

In order to transport military rations for a long distance, the husband ordered a large number of people to be requisitioned, build a Hancheng on top of Shugang, and dig a ditch at the foot of Shugang, making it an artificial waterway connecting the Yangtze River and the Huai River. For the construction scene of building Hancheng and digging ditches, the history books used four words to describe it, that is, "lifting the gong like a cloud", which shows its momentum. Fucha was the last monarch of Wu during the Spring and Autumn Period, and he is known as the "first man" to dig the Grand Canal.

The excavation of the ditch became the beginning of the history of the construction of the Grand Canal, the total length of the ditch is about 200 kilometers, and the two famous historical and cultural cities of Yangzhou and Huai'an were born because of the excavation of the ditch. Since then, Hangou has always been an important part of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and it is also the water artery of the dynasties. The excavation of the ditch objectively played a huge role in the political, economic, and cultural exchanges between the north and the south in the eastern region of China at that time.

With the increasing political, economic and cultural development of the north and the south, the local canals built can no longer meet the needs of the society, especially the Jiangnan region occupies an increasingly important position in the national economic life, and the communication between the north and the south waterways has become the urgent need of social development and the strong desire of the people at that time.

Throughout the history of the construction of the Grand Canal, there have been two large-scale construction of the Grand Canal, the first in the Sui Dynasty. The Grand Canal built by the Sui Dynasty is called the "Sui Dynasty Grand Canal", also known as the Sui and Tang Grand Canals.

Subsequently, the Tang Dynasty carried out long-term and unremitting dredging, repair and management of the Sui-Tang Grand Canal, ensuring the unimpeded flow of the waterway and the normal operation of water transportation. In the first year of Dazu, that is, the imperial court was in Luoyang Lidefang in the Luoshui River of the South Sui and Tang Grand Canals

The construction of Xintan Wharf, "the world's boats and boats, often more than 10,000 ships, fill the river, travel and trade, and stuff the carriages and horses".

According to relevant historical data, at that time, "trough ships came and went, thousands of miles endlessly", "10,000 large ships, turning each other", "shipping trade was all over the three rivers and five lakes", and "half of the world's wealth was all advanced by this road".

Since then, Luoyang has become the largest port along the Grand Canal of the Sui and Tang Dynasties and the central hub of water transportation in the country. All kinds of commodities and materials can reach Yuhai from Luoyang in the east, Guanlong in the west, Suzhou and Hangzhou in the south, and Youyan in the north through the Grand Canal of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Not only that, the water "Silk Road" with Luoyang as the eastern starting point can reach Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Red Sea coast, Northeast Africa and the Persian Gulf countries.

The shadow of the sail covers the sun, the mast is like a forest, and the ships come and go, and there is an endless stream. At that time, Luoyang had become the world's largest logistics park and commodity distribution center, as well as a transit station for import and export goods

(End of chapter)