In fact, my intention is also very simple, it is not yet time to liquidate them, one of the many policies of the imperial court still rely on them to implement and implement, and the second is that the contradictions between them have been made public and clear, so that it will help me to balance and restrain them in the middle, and the third is also subject to the constraints and influence of the ancestral system and the promise given to them in front of the old man at that time, and the fourth is that when I am not full-fledged, moving them will outweigh the losses. The fifth is also to take into account the wait-and-see attitude of other people, how to treat these old men's ministers, although I have also expressed my position before, but after all, they still have concerns in their hearts, and now these two people expose each other, I insist on not blaming them for their mistakes in the past, which is equivalent to giving their people a reassurance, and they dare to speak out when discussing things in the future, and they will not have any concerns.

Seeing my expression, everyone's hearts finally relaxed, at least they could land safely, so they saluted one after another: The emperor is sage. The ruling Yu Wencuizhong stood up at this time and said: Your Majesty, the lower officials have something to say about the Jingshi Canal and the transshipment law. I looked at him slightly, and I saw that Yu Wencui's expression was firm, and I nodded at him.

Yu Wencui saw that I was sure and continued: Since the canal collapsed and became polluted in the late Tang Dynasty, it has been silted up and is not suitable for navigation. The Tang Empire, which had always relied on canals to connect the north with the economic center of gravity in the south, collapsed under this circumstance. After the collapse of the Tang Empire, although Zhu Wen, Shi Jingtang, Liu Zhiyuan and others successively established the country, the canal could not play its role in connecting the north and the south due to silting, and the imperial court they established had to weaken with the separation of the military-political center of gravity and the economic center of gravity, so the scale was far less powerful than the Tang Empire in the past.

This situation began to change dramatically at the end of the Five Dynasties during the reign of Zhou Shizong (954-959). In the five or six years of Shizu, he took Qinlong, Pinghuai You, and Fusanguan, almost flattened most of the important feudal towns of the day, thus laying the foundation of the empire of our dynasty. Not only that, because he leveled Huainan and completed the cause that Zhu Wen could not accomplish in the past, the canal, which used to be cut into two sections and subordinated to two political organizations, was reopened and could reach the Yangtze River directly. In view of this, Zhou Shizong sent people to renovate the canal's waterways on a large scale, restore its transportation efficiency, and reconnect the political and economic centers of gravity, so that the empire that was growing up at that time could be reunited into a strong and solid whole.

Since the beginning of my dynasty to Taizu,

In view of the disaster of the five dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty, Taizu implemented a policy of centralization. Soon after Taizu ascended the throne, he released his military power with a glass of wine, and did not let the soldiers intervene in political affairs, but appointed Wenchen as the local administrator. In order to keep this policy effective, the imperial court concentrated heavy troops in the central government, creating a strong and weak force, so that rebellions could be suppressed everywhere at any time. The army had to be sustained by food, and since the central government had concentrated heavy troops in Beijing, the demand for food had increased dramatically. In order to supply a huge amount of grain, the imperial court had to choose a place that was convenient for transporting Jianghuai rice and grain and could take care of the northern and northwest frontiers to build the capital. At that time, the most suitable place for this condition was Bianzhou, which was located in the northern section of the canal. Since the canal was dug up, Bianzhou has become a hub of north-south transportation.

After the Tang Dynasty, because Bianzhou controlled the traffic of the canal, its position became increasingly important, and the imperial court was equipped with 100,000 troops there. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Wen, who was based in Bianzhou, usurped the throne and took Bianzhou as the capital. Later, although the Tang Dynasty built its capital in Luoyang, soon after, in view of the importance of Bianzhou's economic status, Shi Jin took Bianzhou as the capital and named Tokyo, and the Later Han Dynasty and Later Zhou Dynasty also did the same. Because Bianzhou has such an important historical background, although the Taizu of our dynasty, who created the Great Unified Empire, was not satisfied with the flatness of Bianzhou's terrain and took Luoyang or Chang'an, which were in a more dangerous situation, as his ideal capital, but in order to meet the imperial court's needs for a large amount of food, he had no choice but to accommodate the fact that Bianzhou, which was easy to reach with Jianghuai materials, as the capital, and named Bianjing or Tokyo. It can be seen from this that the reason why the Great Song Empire took Bianjing as its capital was that the canal really played a decisive role.

It can be seen from this that Bianjing can be the capital of the Great Song Dynasty's unified empire, and the canal is one of the important factors. Because Bianjing has such a close relationship with the canal, when the canal burst in June of the second year of Chunhua (991), even Emperor Taizong himself personally went down to the river to supervise the repair. Originally, in view of the fact that Bianjing was not in danger to defend, Taizu had planned to move the capital to Luoyang, or even Chang'an, where the situation was dangerous, but in fact, because Bianjing was more convenient for Cao Yun, his plan had to be completely abandoned. Subsequently, the elders of Luoyang asked Zhenzong to move the capital to Yuluo, and Zhenzong also refused because of the inconvenience of transportation in the place.

The imperial court also adopted the method of segmented transportation, that is, the transshipment method, for the northward transportation of Jianghuai materials, just like Pei Yaoqing and Liu Yan in the Tang Dynasty when they reformed the Cao Yun. At that time, the distance between the capital and Jianghuai, the center of economic gravity, was much closer than that of the Tang Dynasty, but because of the large number of concentrated troops, the need for food was particularly large. On the other hand, the water of the canal mainly comes from the Yellow River, which is only navigable for about half a year from March and April every year due to the dry water of the Yellow River in winter, and is not navigable due to the shallow water in October. Since the canal is only about one-half of the time available for ships to sail every year, the imperial court has no choice but to make the best use of this half-year navigable time for Jiang Zhun's huge amount of rice and grain to the north. In addition, the depth of the canal is not as deep as that of the Yangtze River, and it cannot sail large ships like the Yangtze River. Under such circumstances, if the canal is to be fully utilized, it is the most appropriate way to do so.

At that time, the rice and grain supplied by the Southeast Sixth Road were transported by the transfer department of each route to Zhenzhou (now Yizheng, Jiangsu), Yangzhou, Chuzhou (now Huai'an, Jiangsu), Sizhou and other places at the specified time every year, and the shipping department was responsible for collecting it. These stored in the transshipment warehouses of the various states were transported to Bianjing by ship by the shipping department when the canal was long and navigable. The shipping department has a huge amount of money, which is used as the capital to buy rice for storage in normal times, so that in case the rice is not transported to the specified time, the transshipment department will be transported to Bianjing instead, so as not to miss the navigable time of the canal. These pre-stored rice are mostly purchased at the time and place of the agricultural harvest, so that the agricultural harvest can be paid instead of money, so it has a significant contribution to the regulation of grain supply and demand in terms of time and space.

In addition, at that time, the imperial court implemented a monopoly on salt, and most of the salt produced along the Huainan coast was concentrated in Zhenzhou first, so that the ships from Jinghu and Liangzhejiang in the south of the Yangtze River could unload the rice and load it back to various places for sale, which was naturally much more economical than going back by empty ships.

When it comes to the boats that carry rice back and forth on the canals, the shipping department often has 6,000 boats on hand. Each ship carries three or four hundred stones, and goes back and forth three or four times a year. In addition to the food eaten by the boatmen along the way, the rice transported to Bianjing by each boat in a year totaled about 1,000 stones, and the total was 6 million stones. Many of the ships that sail back and forth on the canals cannot be left unorganized if they are to be efficient. The imperial court formed a transport team of ten ships, called "Gang", and was escorted by an envoy or military general. Later, at the beginning of the ninth year of Dazhong Xiangfu (1016), in order to prevent the theft of official property, Li Pu was sent to merge the three outlines into one outline, which was escorted by three people, and the three cooperated with each other, and the management was more thorough than the previous one. Later, in the second year of Xining (1069), because the officials of Cao Yun often engaged in private fraud, Xue Xiang recruited passenger boats and official boats to divide them, so as to supervise each other and put an end to malpractice. As for the food consumed by the servants along the way, although they could be taken from the rice transported in the boats, the ships were not allowed to cook freely, and the kitchen ships were responsible for handling it. Because in this way, fires can be avoided on the one hand, and theft of rice can be prevented on the other. In this way, the transport ships continued to improve, and the grain transported to Jingshi was also very stable, and the consumption on the way was less and less, and the grain transported to Jingshi was more and more.

As a result of these methods, the early canals transported a considerable amount of goods to the north each year. Among them, the light rice grain was transported to Bianjing by the Southeast Sixth Road, and at the beginning of the Dao Dynasty (995), the rice was transported to 5.8 million stones. At the beginning of Dazhong Xiangfu (1008), 7 million stones, and then more and more, at the end of Zhenzong and the time of Renzong (1023-1064), the canal transported rice to Bianjing every year, sometimes as much as 8 million stones.

In addition, the canal transports other materials north every year, such as gold, silver, money, silk, tea and various military supplies, in large quantities. At that time, all over the south, in addition to the southeast six roads for rice, Sichuan because of the distance, the goods transported to Bianjing through the Yangtze River and the canal every year were mainly cloth, and the Guangnan East Road was the location of the important port of foreign trade, and the goods transported to Bianjing through the Ganjiang River, the Yangtze River and the canal in the north every year were mainly gold, silver, incense, rhino horn, ivory and department stores. These many materials formed the economic basis on which the Jingshi and the imperial court depended, and the canal was the most important factor in the fact that they could be transported from the south to the central government in large quantities.

It was under such a condition that the canal was unobstructed, and the huge amount of materials transported from the south to the north through the canal was not used alone to feed the hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in Bianjing and pay for the administrative expenses of the imperial court, but some of them were transferred north to Hebei, Hedong, and Shaanxi to meet the needs of national defense at that time.

Among the three routes, the communication between Hebei and the canal was more convenient, and there were more troops stationed there to defend against the biggest foreign enemy of the day, so the materials transported north along the canal by Jianghuai were mostly transported there. In addition, in Shandong, when there was a grain panic, the imperial court often transferred the Jiangzhun rice grain from the canal to the north.

Therefore, Xiaguan believes that the canal is related to the fate of our Great Song Empire, and its transshipment method that has been applied for hundreds of years is indeed the best mode of transportation at present, and the current direct navigation method has many shortcomings.