Liu Bei also had a difficult background. After all, he weaved mats and sold shoes until he was fourteen, and worked as a guide and bodyguard for horse merchants until he was eighteen. Later, he relied on relatives and friends to fund his studies and gradually became prosperous.
Even though he has been an official for many years now, he still knows very well the importance of understanding the suffering of the people with his own eyes and ears.
Sun Qian told him that the people did not respond to the government's call to plant mustard because of fear of the unknown, but Liu Bei still insisted on taking the time to go to the countryside to confirm.
So after breakfast, he took his entourage and rode for more than twenty miles, visiting three townships and more than a dozen villages in the eastern part of Guangling County.
Interviewed hundreds of sampled landlords, gentry, and farmers to understand their concerns and listen to public feedback.
Finally, I personally took off my straw sandals and walked barefoot in the fields to see how to breed and transplant germinated mustard seeds.
After all, this method had never been seen before, and Liu Bei had to confirm the operation himself in order to evaluate the impact of the new production method on the people's labor.
After all this work, a whole morning and noon passed. I had some free time to finish eating the dry food, and the sun was already slightly westward, probably around 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
Fortunately, the last village Liu Bei inspected was right on the edge of Hangou, not far from the mouth of Hangou where it empties into the Yangtze River.
And that place happened to be where Zhuge Jin was tinkering with new inventions, so Liu Bei hurriedly ate two coarse grain pancakes and a piece of dried meat before preparing to inspect Zhuge Jin's achievements.
…
Just a quarter of an hour later, Liu Bei arrived at the mouth of the Hangou Canal and the Yangtze River, more than ten miles southeast of Guangling City.
Guangling City is an important ancient canal town, at the confluence of the Yangtze River and Hangou. Naturally, there are prosperous towns and ports.
The riverside was bustling with people and countless dock workers were busy there, so Liu Bei couldn't find the whereabouts of Zhuge Jin and his party for a while.
During the Han Dynasty, the canal had no locks. The water level difference between the artificial canal and the natural river was a big problem, so river boats and canal boats could not be used at all.
When a canal boat sails from Huaiyin to Guangling, it has to unload its cargo and load it onto the river boat again. The same applies to the river boat heading north. It is this characteristic of the ancient canal that caused the prosperity of Yangzhou City for thousands of years in later generations.
Liu Bei searched for a long time, and finally Sun Qian saw a few familiar faces. He quickly led Liu Bei over and asked, "Where is Mr. Zhuge? Didn't you help Mr. Zhuge make bamboo rafters? Why are you here alone?"
Liu Bei followed the sound and saw Sun Qian questioning a group of merchants and sailors. Next to him were many large hard curved nets formed by interlaced bamboo pieces, with some strange attachments on the upper and lower sides.
The bamboo pieces were fixed crosswise, and there were sharp burrs formed by splitting the bamboo. Liu Bei could see at a glance that some of the burrs had fish stuck on them. The sailors took the fish off one by one and threw them into the water of the canal nearby.
Liu Bei was startled. He looked in the direction of the movement and noticed that there was a row of large wooden piles next to them. Many hemp ropes were tied to the wooden piles. The other ends of the hemp ropes were floating in the canal water and tied to large bamboo baskets.
Only then did he feel relieved. It turned out that he had not caught the fish and then thrown it away. Instead, he had put it in the bamboo basket to raise it first, so that the fish would die slowly.
In Chinese textbooks of later generations, "羾" is often directly translated as "fishing net", but this is actually a bit different. In ancient times, it was made of soft fibers and was called "net", while 羾 was often hard and was regarded as a "bamboo frame" Big net" and bamboo "fish guard".
When Liu Bei saw these gains, he felt quite reassured and realized that Zhuge Jin's little invention must have worked. It is really surprising that this kind of bamboo net caught so many fish.
The group of people also saw Liu Bei, saluted him respectfully, and then answered Sun Qian's question:
“The gentleman said that today’s tide was high and he was afraid that the fishing net would be washed away, so he took people to a place farther upstream and said that he would wait until the tide passed before going down.
I was waiting to recycle the old bamboo rafters laid yesterday to record the catch at high tide, and sure enough, several bamboo rafters had been washed away. "
After Liu Bei heard this, he added another question: "It seems that the harvest is very good. This thing is really useful. Why didn't you report it earlier?"
The other party replied respectfully: "The income from these nets is about three to five hundred catties, and today it has been over a thousand catties. The teacher said there is still a lot of room for improvement, so he did not report it."
When Liu Bei heard this number, he was surprised at first, and then even more surprised: "You have gained a thousand catties in a day, but you still haven't succeeded? How many bamboo stalks have been planted in total?"
The friend told me that he had downloaded dozens of pictures in the past few days, and the number was increasing day by day. He also improved and adjusted several editions.
In the beginning, I only caught a few hundred kilograms in total on the first day. After five days of continuous improvement, the amount has increased by more than ten times.
Liu Bei was astonished and then asked happily: "What is your name? Who did you originally follow?"
The man held up his hand and said, "My name is Tang Guang. I am a native of Yuzhang. I was born as a fisherman in Poyang in my early years, and later worked as a sailor for rich merchants on the river. A few years ago, my old master was killed by water thieves in the Lujiang River, and I lived in Guangling. Fortunately, Mi Gong recruited someone who is good at recruiting people. I am the one who drives the boat.
The day before yesterday, Mr. Mi assigned me to my husband to help him control the fleet. He saw that I was diligent and stayed around to do things. In the past few days, he ordered us to cut bamboo and make bamboo rafts. "
Liu Bei nodded and thought that he was from the Mi family merchant fleet. No wonder he was dressed somewhere between a merchant and a sailor.
Liu Bei was in a good mood, so he encouraged us: "It is a great opportunity to work with Mr. Zhuge. If we are willing to listen carefully, it is not difficult for us to be rich and powerful, even for sailors and fishermen. Please take us to see Mr. Zhuge."
Tang Guang quickly led the way and led the group to the river a few miles upstream, where Liu Bei saw a larger formation.
There were hundreds of people on the shore, busy coming and going, being directed and directed by Zhuge Jin, waving cattail leaf fans.
Liu Bei trotted to meet him: "Tzuyu! I haven't seen you for a few days. You have done a great job at home! You still kept it a secret from Gongyou!"
Zhuge Jin quickly turned around and patted the dirt on his hands, not modestly saying: "Some tricks are useless if they have not been improved and perfected."
Liu Bei smiled and boasted: "With just a few nets, we gained thousands of catties in a day. Isn't that good enough? If we can promote this product, our army's food shortage can finally be alleviated by most! The people of Jing and Wu can make up for the rice, rice, soup and fish by catching fish, at least I can eat half the grain."
Zhuge Jin: "What the general just saw was the one I improved two days ago. Of course it is barely eye-catching. If it were the versions four or six days ago, it would be a drop in the bucket."
Liu Bei didn't have time to take a closer look at the principle of this new fishing net. Tang Guang and others didn't study, so they couldn't explain the reason. Now after hearing Zhuge Jin's explanation, Liu Bei was naturally curious and humbly asked what improvements had been made.
Zhuge Jin asked someone to take a few discarded "historical versions" nearby and explain the principles.
"This thing is called a 'streaming gill net'. It takes advantage of the characteristics of migratory fish in rivers and seas. The net is placed directly at the bottom of the river bed to intercept the tide. When the tide is high, marine fish migrate into the river and when the tide goes back to the sea, they will hit the net. There are also bamboo branches on the net. The barbs formed by the forks and splits can tie up big fish.”
Zhuge Jin came up with this idea more than ten days ago, and the source of his ideas was, to be honest, inertia - in his previous life, he liked to play historical strategy games, such as "Age of Empires", and also liked to watch in-game documentaries.
In the Age of Empires series, the Feudal Age has a technology called "Longline", and the Castle Age also has a technology called "Gillnet".
The game's historical research is pretty good. The technology of the second era in the game basically corresponds to the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Era three corresponds to the two Song dynasties, and era four corresponds to the Ming dynasty.
Although he won’t directly tell people the technical details when playing games, there were many fishermen among his colleagues in his previous life. When Zhuge Jin was talking about games during team building, his colleagues told him what these technologies were.
Calculated, in China, longline fishing with multiple hooks on a rope did not exist until the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and gill nets that directly sink into rivers to capture migrating fish did not exist until the Southern Song Dynasty.
When people in the Han Dynasty fished, they still used single-hook fishing rods, hand-thrown nets, or lift-type bamboo frame reels to catch fish, and that was it.
It is precisely because the fishing technology is so primitive that the ecological environment is very well protected. The fishery resources in the Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers are simply more than they would be after the ten-year fishing ban in later generations. Humanity's meager catch puts no pressure on the ecology of this era at all.
That's why it was said in "Three Kingdoms" that Yuan Shu's army recruited too many troops and was short of food in Huainan, so he relied on collecting river mussels to satisfy his hunger. Yi Zhongtian even ridiculed this on the show. But who knew that there were so many mussels in the Huaihe River at that time?
Liu Bei was originally in Huaibei, and there was only one Sishui River outside Xiapi City. The fishery resources were not rich, so Liu Bei did not expect that the fishing harvest could be so large.
His current new territory, Huaiyin can intercept the Huaihe River and the mouth of the Hangou River, and Guangling can intercept the mouth of the Hangou River and the Yangtze River. This is the best position for fishery resources in the entire late Han Dynasty, and is very suitable for the development of new technologies.
After Zhuge Jin explained the basic principles of the gill net, he told Liu Bei why this location was very good: "To maximize the value of the gill net, it must have daily periodic migrations, and it is best to take advantage of the rise and fall of the tide.
However, the large rivers that can be affected by the tide are generally too wide and deep to set up gill nets. At most, the nets can only be set up in the shallows of the river, and when the tide goes out, they will be exposed to the water to pick up a few fish. The fishing nets will most likely be blocked by the tide. Rush away.
But at both ends of Hangou, there are migratory fishing grounds made in heaven. Hangou is an artificial canal dug by King Wu Fu Chai, so naturally there is a big problem, that is, it cannot ensure that the water levels at the two ends connecting the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River are the same.
The two estuaries of Hangou are higher in the north and lower in the south. When the tide ebbs, the south mouth becomes shallower. Due to the height difference, the water of the Huaihe River in the north will rush south into Hangou, enter Yangze, and then flow into the Yangtze River. If it weren't for the large lake Sheyangze in the middle that could regulate the water level, the water in Hangou in the southern section would have been drained by the Yangtze River.
But now we can use the mouth of Hangou to lower our nets for fishing. The depth of Hangou is much shallower than that of the Yangtze River and other natural rivers, but the water flow is not small. Large rocks can be hung at the bottom of the gill net to ensure that it will not be washed away. In this way, as long as there are big fish swimming by or even rushing across the river mouth, they can be caught in one catch!
However, today is a day of high tide, and the water is too turbulent. I didn't dare to lower the net just now. I wanted to wait until the peak of the tide has passed before lowering the net, and focus on catching the wave of fish at low tide. General, if you are interested, you can follow me to watch the tide, and see how much fish can be caught when the tide goes out. "
