Getting the court to make up its mind to abandon water transportation and getting the court to abandon the canal are completely different things. The function of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal is not only to ensure grain transportation, but also has another role that cannot be ignored - shortening the spatial distance between the north and the south.
When the canal was completely unnavigable, the time it took for merchants and pedestrians to travel by land between the two places was suddenly extended from the original ten days to a month. Such inefficiency would definitely affect the imperial court's management of the entire Jiangnan, a tax-rich area, and also affect the north and south. circulation of goods.
Therefore, Pan Jixun's so-called abandonment of water transportation only meant abandonment of water transportation. In other words, if canals are not used to transport grain, then there is no need to keep the Three Thousand Miles Canal open at all times - which will greatly reduce the difficulty of managing the Yellow River.
Initially, in order to meet Zhu Yijun's "three guarantees" requirements of protecting water transportation, protecting ancestral mausoleums, and protecting people's livelihood, Pan Jixun's first version of the river management report put forward very limited methods for river control to the court. Weir dams store water to attack sand, but they dare not expand Weishan Lake to affect people's livelihood and transportation, so all the work they do is tinkering and tinkering, similar to Zhu Heng's methods.
Even from the perspective of Zhu Yijun, a semi-layman, this version of the plan cannot solve the problem of intensive flooding of the Yellow River and Huaihe River.
During the Wanli period, the Yellow River had been fixed along the Xinzheng-Xuzhou-Huai'an line for hundreds of years. It was not until the end of the Qing Dynasty that it broke through again and returned northward at Tongwaxiang, Henan, ending the history of the Yellow-Huaihe confluence.
In the 18th year of Yongle, Chengzu moved the capital to Beijing, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal became the lifeline. The 500-mile-long Grand Canal from Xuzhou to Qingkou must be supported by the water of the Yellow River to remain open.
The Yellow River runs rampant in the Huaihe River and southwestern Shandong areas, causing numerous diversions and seriously affecting water transportation.
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty's water control idea during this period was to "block the south and dredge the north, and suppress the southward flow of the river to protect the canal transportation." The Huaihe River and its tributaries were used as the downstream channel of the Yellow River floods by using long embankment constraints. Emperor Hongzhi and Emperor Jiajing built the Golden Embankment and the South Embankment respectively, which were the products of this kind of thinking.
The direct consequence of this kind of thinking and approach is that the sediment of the Yellow River is deposited into the lower reaches of the Huaihe River, causing the originally deep and wide Huaihe River to be deposited into an above-ground river, and the Huaihe River system suffered great damage. The Huaihe River, which cannot compete with the Yellow River, has taken another route and rushed into the Yangtze River, causing the flow of water in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to increase and bringing huge flood control pressure to the Susong area.
What's ridiculous is that as long as the court can maintain water transportation, the suffering of the people in the Huaihe and Huaihe areas is not at all considered by the Ming Dynasty court. In the 14th year of Yongle's reign, the Yellow River burst in Kaifeng, flooding fourteen prefectures and counties, and entered the Huaihe River from the Wohe River. Because it did not endanger the destiny, the imperial court at that time actually let it go and let the Yellow River flow for more than 40 years.
During the subsequent Zhengtong, Jingtai, Hongzhi, and Jiajing years, there were several major floods in the Huang and Huaihe rivers. The imperial court's thinking remained unchanged, and it still focused on protecting luck and ignored the livelihood of the people in the Huanghuai land.
At that time, the southeastern Henan and northwest Anhui areas had become a water town. Fengyang, Sizhou, Huai'an and other places were often affected by disasters. The imperial court ignored the wailing of the victims and refused to rescue them.
A section of Fengyang Flower Drum that has been widely circulated in later generations expresses the heart-wrenching pain the Ming court brought to the people: "Speak of Fengyang and say Fengyang. Fengyang was originally a good place, but since Emperor Zhu came out, there have been many people in the past ten years." Nine years of famine. Large families sell mules and horses, while small families sell sons and sons..."
This lyrics was written by the Ming Dynasty. The original text of the first sentence is: "I live in Luzhou and Fengyang..." Later Teresa Teng also created a popular song based on this folk song.
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As Pan Jixun's investigation deepened, and Zhu Yijun's policy of abandoning water transportation gradually took shape in his mind, Pan Jixun abandoned the idea of "blocking the south and dredging the north" to manage the river, and put forward a complete plan for future generations to make it famous: raising the height Gaojiayan will be widened to store water from Hongze Lake, and the water from Hongze Lake will be used to implement the "water-containing sand attack" project to deepen the silted waterways of the Yellow River and increase downstream flow, thereby reducing flooding in the two rivers.
This idea of river management was implemented in the late Manchu Dynasty. But in the Ming Dynasty, there was a deadlock that was difficult to untie - the heightening of Gaojiayan, the expansion and deepening of Hongze Lake, and the arrival of the flood season on the Huang and Huai rivers would threaten the safety of the ancestral mausoleum. Therefore, "confining water to attack sand" was still a half-baked project until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and flooding of the Huanghuai River was still frequent.
Zhu Yijun, Zhang Juzheng and other cabinet ministers discussed it repeatedly, and asked the empress dowagers Chen and Li for instructions, but in the end they could not make up their minds to move the ancestral mausoleum. ——If we really want to do this now, the political resistance is too great. It is not an exaggeration to say that it will shake the foundation of the country.
But if the ancestral mausoleum is not moved, the effect of "confining water to attack sand" will be greatly reduced. The Ming Dynasty will always linger under the threat of these two rivers, and a large amount of resources will be invested in the vicious cycle of disaster relief and leakage repair-this is another Zhu Yijun couldn't tolerate it.
Moreover, because Pan Jixun conducted more in-depth research in this time and space, in the second version of the report, he also pointed out the shortcomings of the strategy of "confining water to attack sand". Since the root problem of the "Huaihe River Confluence" has not been solved, and the factor of "the Yellow River is strong and the Huai River is weak, the Yellow River is high and the Huai River is low", during the flood season, the Huaihe River waterway cannot fully accommodate the floods released, which will cause backwater to flood the lake. The lake silted up the clear water outlet of Hongze Lake.
If things go on like this, on the one hand, it will affect the effect of "confining water to attack sand"; on the other hand, when the water flow slows down, a hanging river will form below Xuzhou.
After Pan Jixun's second plan was rejected by the emperor, he finally became ambitious again, and this time it was so ambitious that he actually wanted to use a series of dam projects and excavation of new rivers to restore the Yellow River and Huaihe River's access to the sea alone!
The specific idea is to first intercept the inflow channels of the Yellow River into Hongze Lake and the original Huaihe River, and use a series of dams and old river channels to force the Yellow River to flow northward into the sea. Then, using Hongze Lake as a hub, the Huaihe River water was put into the old river channel and the connection between the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River was cut off.
This grand project will use the newly opened and the previous rivers to alternately use two rivers to completely solve the siltation problem of the Yellow River. The construction plan is as follows:
First, a new river channel was opened to divert the Yellow River from the Huai River to the north. At the same time, Gaojiayan will be raised and widened to store Huaihe water, and then it will leave the lake from the southwest of Hongze Lake, use the old channel of the Yellow River to enter the sea, and brush out the old channel.
When part of the old river channel is brushed out, the channel from the Huaihe River to the Yangtze River will be cut off, all the water from the Huaihe River will be directed into Hongze Lake, the Qingshui mouth in the southwest of Hongze Lake will be widened, and the intensity of river brushing will be increased.
When the new channel of the Yellow River gradually silts up in 20 to 30 years, the Yellow River gates will be closed, new dams will be built, and the Yellow River will be directed into Hongze Lake and into the Huaihe River that has been flushed; at the same time, the large sluice in the northeast of Hongze Lake will be opened or Directly break the dykes and use the newly built dykes to divert the Huai water entering Hongze Lake into the "New Yellow River" to flush out the silted New Yellow River.
In this way, the two rivers are alternately used, one is clear and the other is turbid. On the one hand, it solves the problem of flood backflow during the flood season after the Yellow-Huaihe River merges and the sedimentation problem at the clear mouth of Hongze Lake; on the other hand, the two rivers are alternately used to make the Yellow River silt up. The eternal problem has been fundamentally solved. Finally, because Hongze Lake has two water outlets, the pressure on the ancestral mausoleum will be greatly relieved.
The only shortcoming of this plan is that when the Yellow River flows into Hongze Lake, Hongze Lake will be silted up and the hub will fail. However, Pan Jixun judged that because the Huaihe River is located at a low level, when the river course is changed again, most of the sediment accumulated in Hongze Lake will be washed away and will not become a major problem. For a hundred years, it can be left outside Hongze Lake. The next part of the land will not be developed and will serve as a backup flood discharge area; the dredging and desilting project of Hongze Lake can also be carried out during the dry season to expand the storage capacity.
If this plan is successful, it will kill two birds with one stone and meet the emperor's requirement to protect not only the ancestral mausoleum, the canal, but also people's livelihood. Moreover, using this national large-scale project and surrounding supporting water conservancy projects, the Huaihe River and Yellow River basins that have been hit by disasters all year round will become a land of grain and rice - the real success lies in the future.
At that time, Zhang Juzheng looked at the money, food and labor costs of the third report submitted by Pan Jixun. He took a sharp breath and without saying a word, he sentenced the third report to death. But Zhu Yijun was greatly surprised when he saw it.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the methods used to regulate the Yellow and Huaihe Rivers were only partially similar to Pan Jixun's third plan. The biggest difference was that the status of the Huaihe River as still a tributary of the Yangtze River was not completely changed, and the Yellow River also changed its course at that time, so the management of the two rivers was All belong to single basin management. ——The siltation problem of the Yellow River actually no longer needs to be solved in the new century, because the lower reaches of the Yellow River are almost drying up.
The follow-up effects of this plan will be very inspiring: on the one hand, it will break the water condition where the three rivers are linked and all are flooded. By using the Yellow and Huaihe Rivers to enter the sea separately, it will solve the problem of the Yellow-Huaihe River conflict and the excessive water volume in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River at once. question. Since then, flood control and management of the three major rivers, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and the Huaihe River, have become single-basin issues.
Secondly, the two rivers use Hongze Lake and the surrounding series of lakes as hubs, and take turns using the strategy of "confining water to attack sand" to control the Yellow River, which will effectively control the problem of siltation hazards in the Yellow River.
Thirdly, with the two rivers flowing out, the water storage pressure of Hongze Lake is reduced, which also protects the Ming Zuling Tomb. Of course, if he wants to save it once and for all, Zhu Yijun plans to move the Zuling Tomb when the time is right.
Finally, this core project, coupled with supporting related water conservancy facilities, will change the turbulent waves and mud and sand in the Huanghuai area that has been hit by disasters all year round, and turn the entire Huaihe River Basin and Yellow River Basin into a land of plenty! Although it cannot be solved once and for all, it can at least solve more than half of the problems of the Yellow and Huaihe Rivers bursting open for years and affecting the lower reaches of the Yangtze River - except for the large amount of work, there is no other problem.
Zhu Yijun judged that although the manpower and material resources required for this plan were extremely staggering, it was indeed possible to realize it at this time:
When New China regulated the Huaihe River, the area around the Huaihe River was already densely populated with large and small cities and could not be relocated at all. Therefore, a method was adopted to build a dam upstream and divert the water downstream. The main stream still flows into the Yangtze River.
But at this time and space, due to the perennial flooding of the Huanghuai River, large-scale settlement towns have never been formed in the Huanghuai Plain to northern Jiangsu. Most of the areas are swamps and fields, and the immigration pressure is not very scary. Within the tolerance range;
The two imperial courts now have a large amount of money to start this project;
The large-scale development of the Northeast by the three parties will create a short window period during which population pressure will decrease. When the Northeast is matured, population pressure will increase, and immigration will become more difficult at that time.
Therefore, after Zhu Yijun fully considered Pan Jixun's third plan, he felt that the restoration of the Yellow Old Road might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the Chinese nation's perennial floods!
Besides, as a time traveler, Zhu Yijun didn’t dare to think about things that Zhang Juzheng didn’t dare to think about?
At the end of the second year of Wanli, Pan Jixun completed his inspection of various river basins across the country and went to the capital to report on his work. Under the leadership of Zhu Yijun, adhering to the principle of improving the plan while constructing, preparatory works were carried out in the third year of Wanli.
Therefore, this third plan has been kept secret. In the third year of Wanli, the whole country was busy working on it. In fact, it was the initial projects and farmland water conservancy infrastructure projects that both the second and third plans were doing.
It was not until Pan Jixun was attacked when the river was converted into a sea that the imperial court announced part of it, mainly the heightening and widening of Gaojiayan project - less than one-tenth of the total project volume of the third plan.
Even so, the anti-shipping faction that focused on Pan Jixun was silenced.
At the end of the third year of Wanli in this time and space, the government and the public reached a consensus with the river-to-water reform, and the Yellow River flooded again this year, which finally gave the court in this time and space a painful lesson. Zhu Yijun first persuaded the cabinet, and then pushed the court to pass the third plan. It was planned to invest 12 million taels of silver in the first phase, and gradually increase the total amount to 30 million taels. Over a period of twenty years, all the new plans would be completed. A basin-wide water control project with the Yellow River entering the sea as its core!
