Chapter 57 Three Thousand Years of Liaoze
That's it today.
The Liaohe Plain in his impression did not exist at all.
The basis for everything is non-existent.
However, He Xi washed his face with cold Liaohe River water, started thinking again, and asked Yao Guangxiao to come over and ask Liaoze about the problem.
Yao Guangxiao said: "This has been the case in the lower reaches of the Liaohe River since ancient times. Speaking of which, since the Tang and Song Dynasties, Liaoze has actually shrunk a lot, and the West Liaohe River has dried up a lot. Therefore, the West Liaohe River area has gradually turned into grassland, and even turned into a desert. The tendency. As for the lower reaches of the Liao River, especially the Western Liao Corridor. Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty was unable to attack Liaodong, not because Goguryeo was strong, but because it was difficult to cross hundreds of miles of Liao Ze, which was a natural danger."
"It is only in the past few hundred years that the Western Liaoning Corridor has been able to carry carriages and horses."
He Xi was silent for a while and said: "What if, I say if. How about planting rice thousands of miles across Liaoze?"
Yao Guangxiao was stunned immediately. His rare expression was out of control. After a while, he said: "Maybe it's feasible."
If an ordinary person listened to what He Xi said, he would probably think that He Xi was crazy. But Yao Guangxiao is no ordinary person. Yao Guangxiao is proficient in hundreds of schools of thought and even knows the art of Yin and Yang. I can’t say I am proficient in water conservancy, but I am certainly no stranger to it. Precisely because he was not unfamiliar with it, he felt that He Xi's plan was feasible from a water conservancy perspective.
He also followed He Xi to explore many swamps, and he was also carrying a lot of bags.
He found that in most places in Liaoze, the water was not too deep. Is there any place where there can be swamps several meters deep? The men and horses were trapped in a place where not even a shadow could be seen. Yes, of course there is. But on the whole, this is not the case.
Most swamps are relatively shallow. For the people in Jiangnan, converting such wetlands into paddy fields is not a difficult task.
After all, a few hundred years ago, the situation in Jiangnan was not much better than here. In terms of management difficulty, the swamp near the mouth of Xinjingjiang River in Taiwan is treated in the same way as Liaoze. It's just that the amount of work has been enlarged by more than a thousand times, or even more.
This is also what surprised Yao Guangxiao.
He had no idea how He Xi's brain grew. Just like now, everyone has seen such a large-scale swamp wetland. There are all kinds of ideas. Since ancient times, some people have written poems about Liaoze, some lamenting the difficulty of traveling, and some lamenting the vastness of Liaoze. But no one said anything about changing Liaoze into paddy fields?
This courage alone is extraordinary.
But Yao Guangxiao didn't know that He Xi was actually the cause and effect. He knew that the Liaodong Plain would later become an important grain producing area. He couldn't guess for a moment when it became like this. He estimated that there were three factors, the first being natural evolution. Time is the greatest force. The second is the opening of borders in the late Qing Dynasty. In the late Qing Dynasty, tens of millions of people migrated to develop the Northeast. It is the famous Chuang Guandong. The third is to develop the Great Northern Wilderness. After all, the scale of this move since the founding of the People's Republic of China has been quite large.
He misses the Internet a little bit. This is something you can find out by searching on the Internet.
However, although he didn't know how Liaoze was swallowed up. But one thing he knew was that it could be done. This is particularly important. As wise as Yao Guangxiao, he never thought about this matter at all.
He Xi asked: "What should Mr. Yao do?"
Yao Guangxiao said: "Technically there is no problem. It is impossible to dig ditches to drain stagnant water. The lower ones are ponds, and the higher ones are fields. It's just that this requires too much manpower and material resources. In my opinion, it took thirty years for the imperial court to With the national strength, this may not be possible. It will take millions of people and more than ten years to achieve success. This is what I just estimated. It is hard to say how much manpower and material resources are needed to carry out this project. And it is exhaustive. With the imperial court's thirty years of manpower and material resources, it is impossible to decide. My lord, don't you remember Yin Jian from the previous dynasty?"
Yin Jian? What Yin Jian?
Naturally, it was Mo Dao Shiren who provoked the Yellow River world to rebel with one eye.
Isn’t the project of repairing the Yellow River huge? But this Liaoze project is even more massive. It is countless times bigger than Jialu's project to repair the Yellow River. This kind of project really needs to be completed. It is also very possible for the feudal dynasty to use the power of the people to rebel again.
The reigning emperor. As long as the brain is not kicked by a donkey. Neither would do such a thing.
He Xi actually understood that he just wanted to hear a different strategy from Yao Guangxiao. After hearing what Yao Guangxiao said, he said with some disappointment: "Is there really no way?"
Yao Guangxiao said: "If this project lasts for decades and hundreds of years to be completed, and the people work on it from generation to generation, it may be feasible. But" Yao Guangxiao said with a wry smile: "Where in the world can there be a government that lasts for hundreds of years and thousands of years?"
In fact, although Liaoze gradually became smaller due to the natural environment, what really made Liaoze history was the breakthrough to Guandong. Countless people asked for land in the swamps, and finally these swamps were largely filled up. In fact, even now, these wetlands have not completely disappeared. They have all become protected areas or wetland parks.
He Xi secretly thought: "Things have come around again. In the final analysis, it is a lack of productivity. It seems that I have to set up another topic."
He Xi still believed in Yao Guangxiao's judgment. However, he also knew that Yao Guangxiao's judgment was based on the construction machinery of this era. What kind of construction machinery, just ordinary farm tools, plus animal-drawn carriages and so on.
To complete such a big project. It will take decades or more.
But He Xi wants to get the construction machinery of later generations, two hundred miles wide and a thousand miles long, which seems like a lot. But acquiring a large number of construction machinery may take several years of work. But only for a few years. After all, the requirements are not high. The productivity levels vary greatly.
It is absolutely impossible to rely solely on manpower. The level of production tools must be improved.
He Xi even discovered a problem, that is, manpower was also a problem.
After all, this is the early Ming Dynasty, not the late Ming Dynasty. Nor is it the middle or late Qing Dynasty.
Now the north has long been beaten to pieces. Uninhabited for thousands of miles. People need to migrate to other places to fill in the population. Although the Ming Dynasty has a registered population of more than 60 million, there may be many omissions, but it is relatively accurate. But 60 million people, corresponding to a land as large as the Ming Dynasty, are generally relatively short of people.
It is impossible to relocate a large number of people to work.
Even if the population shortage is a factor, it is difficult to say whether it is good or bad for He Xi.
The population shortage has caused many policies to encounter bottlenecks. For example, overseas kingship. Why are there only tens of thousands of people in Xinjingjiang? It's because the local government doesn't let people go at all. Unless ordered by the imperial court to move. Therefore, we can only complete the three guards of King Jingjiang. Migrate there together with your family members.
After all, in the early Ming Dynasty, it was still very common for entire guards to move, after all, these cities on the grassland. In many cases, instead of temporarily building a new health center, the original old health center was renamed and placed here.
Not to mention, when the capital was moved to Beijing, many health clinics were also moved together.
Moreover, the only time Zhu Yuanzhang could do was to complete the three guards of Jingjiang King.
In many cases, the three bodyguards of the feudal king were not satisfied with the arrangement. It's not that the feudal king has three guards. These three guards are like a full guard station with 5,600 people. But it varies from person to person. The sum of the three guards of many vassal kings is less than one full guard.
But in addition, this situation is not without its benefits.
From a historical perspective, population growth has been explosive. Now there are 60 million people. Six hundred years later, there will be 1.4 billion people. But from a practical point of view, it is actually very difficult for people to grow up. It takes at least ten years to reach adulthood.
This is half a person's life.
But if you want to do a lot of things today, you need a lot of labor and productivity. And the population growth is slow. Labor costs will slowly rise. Then there will be a market for some machines that save manpower. There is space.
This was the beginning of the Western Industrial Revolution.
One thing has advantages and disadvantages. It just depends on how you look at it.
It's just that He Xi looked at the vast Liaoze and couldn't think of what kind of construction machinery, excavators, trucks, etc. he needed. These things were things he couldn't even think about now.
"Maybe it's a steam pump?" He Xi said to himself with a sad face. What kind of machinery is the topic here?
