The six-dimensional pictures of emperors of all dynasties were exposed, and the ancestors panicked

Chapter 809: Dingwu Famine: No Food in the World
On the canopy.

In the elegant and quiet three-courtyard.

A group of ragged men and women crowded in front of the hall, where they made a fire and cooked.

The backyard gate was closed.

The host, dressed neatly, looked uneasy.

After everyone in the hall had eaten and drunk their fill, they no longer cared about the owner of the backyard and just rushed to another house for their next meal.

After eating in one village, we went to the next one.

……

[People's Livelihood and Economy: From 1877 to 1878, northern China suffered a long and rare drought, with the number of victims reaching million to million.]

[At least 10 million people died of famine and disease, and 20 million people fled from the worst-hit areas to other places.]

[The two years between 1877 and 1878 were the worst years of the disaster. 1877 was the Dingchou Year, and 1878 was the Wuyin Year.]

【So this tragedy was called the "Dingwu Great Famine" in history.】

[This famine also exposed the various ills of local governance during the late Qing Dynasty reform period. ]

……

Tang Xuanzong Period
Li Longji was stunned when he saw the number of 10 million.

“…Don’t they provide disaster relief?”

Li Mi just sighed:

"There were 400 million people in the Qing Dynasty, and 200 million were victims of the disaster."

Half of the country's population are disaster victims. This is not only a natural disaster, but also a man-made disaster.

……

[In 1876, British missionary Timothy Richard was in Qingzhou, Shandong.]

[In May, the hungry people in Qingzhou began to eat the rich people]

【As a kind of existence that "local officials dare not offend", foreign missionaries have become a resource that the hungry people are trying hard to obtain. 】

[On June 6, two scholars in their 30s and s came from Shouguang County and Yidu County to visit Li Timotai. They hoped that Li Timotai would come forward and lead the hungry people to grab food.]

[It was common knowledge in the Qing Dynasty that the imperial court and local officials were afraid of foreign missionaries.]

【But Timothy Richard rejected the scholars’ request. 】

……

Ming dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang could deeply understand how desperate these people were just by looking at their faces and seeing their words.

"The people have been exploited so much that they are on the verge of starvation whenever there is a famine. Under such circumstances, they will naturally take desperate measures."

"But the majesty of the emperor cannot be violated lightly. Rebellion against the emperor is considered treason. After the victims are able to survive, they can only seek help from outsiders..."

"Everything is for survival..."

Empress Ma took Zhu Biao's hand and said:

"Son, you understand that these things cannot be blamed on the people, right?"

Zhu Biao naturally understood, and looked at his parents, saying seriously:

"The warehouse is solid and you know the etiquette; the food and clothing are enough and you know the honor and disgrace."

"They are starving to death, how can you still criticize the morality of the people?"

"This is the court's incompetence, not the people's fault."

……

Qing Dynasty and Qianlong period
"Our ancestors have lost face..."

Qianlong closed his eyes and dared not look anymore. He really hoped that this was all an illusion!
But he was also glad that Timothy Richard rejected the requests of these scholars.

Otherwise, once the riot begins, no one knows how it will end, but there will undoubtedly be massive casualties.

"It seems that this group of people has no intention of abolishing the Qing Dynasty."

Qianlong tried to figure out what the British were doing.

At this time, the Qing Dynasty was still powerful, and the Taiping Rebellion left a deep impression on them.

I'm afraid this is also what they are afraid of.

After all, if they were in control of the Qing Dynasty, they would have to take over the endless problems.

"Hmph, be gentle to distant people."

……

[Richard, who had no intention of leading the hungry people in an uprising, did disaster relief work in Shandong for more than a year. In the autumn of 1877, he went to Shanxi, where the disaster was even more severe.]

[There, he saw even more horrific human misery, and wrote about it in his diary.]

……

On the canopy.

A group of missionaries were walking on the road carrying large and small bags.

They looked to both sides of the road.

There were dead bodies lying on the road and living people still wriggling and crawling.

……

[January 1878, 1, 29 miles south of Taiyuan: "Passed by four dead people lying on the road. Another person was crawling on all fours, no longer able to stand up. Came across a funeral: a mother was carrying her dead son, about ten years old, on her shoulders. She was the only 'palm bearer', 'priest' and mourner, and she placed the child in the snow outside the city wall."]

……

The missionaries continued to move forward.

Occasionally, there were a few old people who had dressed in funeral clothes in advance lying on the side of the road.

Some passers-by did not touch the old people in funeral clothes, but just walked unsteadily and finally fell to the ground.

Not far away, a wild dog was dragging a corpse by the ankle.

The crows carried another piece of carrion.

When they arrived at the gate of a village, the group was shocked and stood still.

They began to pray.

At the door.

On one side was a pile of naked male corpses.

On the other side was also a pile of corpses, all female.

The carriages carried the bodies to two large pits.

Throw the male corpse into a pit.

Throw the female corpse into another pit.

……

[January 1, 30 miles from Taiyuan: "We passed two people who had obviously just died. One was dressed in bright clothes, but died of hunger. A few miles ahead, we found a man about 270 years old walking in front of us. He was staggering as if he was drunk. After being blown down by a gust of wind, he never got up again."]

[January 1, 30 miles from Taiyuan: "I saw four bodies lying on the roadside. One of them was only wearing socks and looked like it was no longer heavy. A dog was dragging it. Two of them were women. People held funerals for them, but just laid them face down on the ground.]

[The passerby was more merciful to one of them and did not take off her clothes.]

[The third body became a feast for a flock of crows and magpies.]

[When I slowly climbed up a hill, I met an old man who told me very sadly: Our mules and donkeys have all been eaten, and the strong laborers have all starved to death. What sin have we committed to deserve such punishment from God?]

[February 2, 1 miles south of Taiyuan: "Six bodies were seen in half a day, four of which were female. One was lying in an open shed, naked, with a belt around her waist, one was lying in a ditch, and one was immersed in the water with half of her body exposed on the ice.]

[One body, half dressed in tattered clothes, was lying next to a hole on the side of the road. Another body had been torn to pieces by carnivorous birds and beasts.]

……

Yanhan·Lingdi Period
Liu Hong was simply born into wealth, not inhumane.

He pointed at everything in the sky and said in a trembling voice:
"Could it be...Could it be that the Yellow Turbans...are also like this?"

What can the people say?

How many of them have ever gone deep into the grassroots?

And then there is finally.

Liu Bei took a deep breath and said while holding the tablet:
“Not just the Yellow Turbans.”

Everyone looked at him.

Liu Bei said in a deep voice:
"There have been signs of this since before the Yellow Turbans." "The ice three feet thick does not form overnight."

"Famine robbed the people of their lives, and beasts devoured their carcasses."

"They died to bear the calamities of nature and man-made disasters without any meaning or explanation!"

"Your Majesty, Yang Zhu did not save the world with a single hair. Without a single hair, the world cannot be saved. And in fact, a single hair is also flesh and blood!"

"A man is the master of his body, and a king is the master of his country."

"One hair and one person are like one person who responds to you!"

"If a man plucks a hair to save the world, it is nothing to worry about."

"You sacrifice one person to save the world? Isn't that a big deal?"

“Is the sacrifice of one person justified?”

Everyone's face changed slightly and they looked at Lu Zhi sideways.

Are you still teaching Yang Zhu?
Lu Zhi looked calm and composed.

Liu Hong looked at Liu Bei and sighed:

“Don’t refrain from doing good deeds no matter how small they are, and don’t do bad deeds no matter how small they are.”

"No wonder you can say such words."

……

{These are all slander and rumors.}
{Do you think that this passage was exaggerated by Timothy Richard for the purpose of preaching?}
{The author should think about or question the accuracy of Li Timotai's retelling.}
{Timothy Lee's diary is not exaggerated.}
{In 1883, a stone tablet titled "Records of the Great Famine in Dingchou" was erected in Niuzhuang Village, Shanxi Province.}
{More than 70% of the village's population died in the famine. The content engraved on the stone tablet is truly horrific.}
{To put it simply, there was a severe drought, and the price of one dan of wheat rose to thirty-two liang.}
{What is this concept? Let’s use rice as an example.}
{According to the calculation that one tael of silver could buy about 1901 jin of rice in 150, one tael of silver was worth 2200 wen at that time, and one jin of rice was worth 14 wen.}
{In the measurement system inherited from the Qing Dynasty, one dan of grain could be equal to 180 jin to 140 jin. Let's assume that one dan is 180 jin, and one jin of rice has risen to 391 wen.}
{It has increased by 27.9 times. The average price of rice is now 3 yuan per catty. 3 times 27.9 equals 83.7, 83 per catty of rice. The average price of wheat is now 1.7 per catty. Of course, this number cannot be very accurate. }
{“People ate tree bark, grass roots, sand and stone flowers from the mountains. They stripped the bark off all the trees and carved up the ground into a wasteland. They ate all the cats and dogs, not to mention the chickens and pigs. They also ate all the sparrows and rats.”}
{“When a person dies, their flesh is eaten, and some sell it. There are even cases where fathers and sons eat each other, and mothers and daughters eat each other. Compared with exchanging children for cannibalism, breaking up corpses for cooking is even more cruel.”}
{A total of 172 households in the village were wiped out, and 1,084 men and women died. More than 70% of the total population was dead.}
……

[In Shanxi, where starving people and corpses were everywhere, Timothy Richard was puzzled: "In the midst of this omnipresent disaster, I have always wondered why no one robbed the rich?"]

[As mentioned earlier, the hungry people in Shandong went straight to eat the rich, and he didn't understand why the people in Shanxi didn't do the same?]

[Because at the beginning of the disaster, notices were posted in every village.]

[The notice announced: The governor has ordered that anyone who dares to commit robbery will be executed on the spot by the heads of villages and towns.]

[While granting the "village and town leaders" the power to execute looters on the spot, the Shanxi Governor's Office also introduced policies to force the wealthy and powerful among the people to donate grain to protect the village.]

[It can be said that he controls the hungry people with one hand and the rich with the other. ]

[Besides that, there was no large-scale civil unrest in Shanxi. This was because when Timothy Richard arrived in Shanxi, the famine had entered its third year, and the wealthy households in the disaster area who had grain had already left, leaving the people with no grain to rob.]

[In Shanxi province alone, the population dropped from 1877 million in 1883 to only million in .]

[Among them, Taiyuan had a population of about one million before the disaster, but only 50,000 people were left after the disaster. ]

……

{If this number is roughly true, it would be hell on earth.}
{As readers of later generations, we only see numbers and recorded texts, but how desperate the common people living in that era must have been. A speck of dust in the era is not worth mentioning in thousands of years of history, but when it falls on every living person and family of that era, it is a disaster like hell on earth.}
{Where does the data come from? You can’t just make it up!}
{Li Yuwen, ed., "Shanxi Modern Population Statistics and Research (1840-1948)", China Economic Publishing House, 1992, p. 7.}
{Other data show that in 1884, Shanxi had a total population of 1066.8266 people, see Shanxi Yearbook (1986), Shanxi People's Publishing House, 1987 edition, pp. 410-411.}
……

Sui Dynasty
Yang Jian felt something was wrong.

"Then there should be disaster relief? It's been three years. Doesn't Shanxi have charity granaries?"

Dugu Jialuo sneered:
"Just like the Qing Dynasty? It's hard to say whether the grain in the charity granary is grain or not, or whether there is any grain at all."

Yang Jian didn't think that was the case.

He sat on the couch in his brocade robe, recalling the events before the Qing Dynasty, and suddenly said:

"Isn't it possible that there is no food grown in Shanxi?"

Dugu Jialuo was stunned for a moment.

Then his expression changed.

It's not impossible.

Jin has always been known as a wealthy region, but in reality the people had no permanent jobs, the soil was not fertile, and the grain production was not much.

After the war in the southeast, the rich became poor and their vitality was greatly damaged.

"No... Could he be growing opium?"

The two thought about the "local opium" that had been mentioned in the sky, and their expressions changed.

……

【There is no grain in Shanxi.】

[In the early summer of 1877, former Shanxi Governor Bao Yuanshen gave an explanation in a memorial to the imperial court. The gist of it is: First, the land in Shanxi is barren, and most people make a living by doing business, with only % to % of the people engaged in farming. However, the rise of the Taiping Army and the Nian Army caused great losses to the business of Shanxi merchants.]

[Second, in good harvest years, Shanxi had to buy grain from neighboring provinces, not to mention the severe drought in 1877 when there was no harvest at all.]

[These two reasons are, of course, true, but Bao Yuanshen deliberately did not mention another equally important reason.]

[The government promotes "local opium cultivation" in Shanxi]

[The outbreak of "local opium cultivation" in Shanxi can be traced back to 1859, the ninth year of Emperor Xianfeng's reign.]

[In that year, in order to increase fiscal revenue, the Qing government promulgated the "Regulations on the Collection of Taxes on Native Medicines", which in disguise legalized the cultivation of local opium.]

[Datong, Shuozhou, Daizhou, Xinzhou and Guihua in northern Shanxi were originally the main grain-producing areas in Shanxi. In the past, every autumn, grain would be transported from the north to Taiyuan in an endless stream.]

[After the local opium was discovered, more than half of the fertile fields in the north were planted with opium. In the south of Shanxi, Ping, Pu, Jie, Jiang and other places used to rely on rice and wheat purchased from the Weinan Plain in Shaanxi for their livelihood, but later they were also covered with opium poppies.]

[The grain production in the Weinan Plain was not enough to feed the local people, so naturally there was no grain to sell to Shanxi.]

[The situation in the north and south was like this. There was no grain to buy in the west. Shanxi's only solution was to cross the Taihang Mountains and go east to other provinces to look for grain at a price ten times higher than the grain price.]

……

Song Dynasty: Zhezong Period
Zhao Xu felt that the Ming and Qing dynasties were truly magical.

"For money, you can do anything."

"In short, it is right not to treat the people as human beings."

In contrast.

Apart from being a bit cowardly, the Song Dynasty was quite a decent person.

"There is no harm without comparison."

……

Ming Dynasty·Chenghua Period
Zhu Jianshen suddenly felt that having Zhu Qizhen as a father was not a big deal.

"Compared to the late Qing Dynasty, our problem is not a big deal."

Growing opium in the native land for money...

"Daqing is afraid that he will live too long."

“This is just a temporary solution.”

……

Qing Dynasty, Daoguang Period
Daoguang only felt like a thunderbolt fell from the sky and hit his head.

"Shanxi only has 350,000 hectares of arable land, which is not enough to support more than 16 million people. Now half of the land is abandoned to grow opium!"

"I don't allow smoking! No smoking!"

Looking east for food?

Shandong east of Taihang Mountains is also a severely affected area!
"Ugh……"

……

[By 1860 and 1870, poppy cultivation had spread throughout the country.]

[From Mongolia in the north to Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi and Xinjiang in the west, from Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian and Guangdong in the south to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong in the east, a large amount of arable land in each province is used to grow opium poppies.]

[The Shenbao, founded in 1872, summarized three reasons in its article “On the Proposal to Relax the Ban on Homegrown Opium”, calling on the imperial court to relax the ban on local opium: First, since the Chinese people like to consume opium, relaxing the ban on local opium will allow the government to levy taxes and keep tens of millions of taels of silver in the country to avoid losing it.]

[Second, improve the opium production method and imitate the Indian method to suit the tastes of domestic consumers. Not only will the government have huge tax revenue, but farmers can also increase their income.]

【3. By raising the price of opium through taxation, the poor will stop smoking and the rich will gradually sell less opium, and eventually the ban will be imposed.】

[The customs report of 1882 showed that Dangshan opium was sufficient to supply 75% of local demand, with Sichuan supplying another 15%, and Taizhou and Xiangshan supplying 10%. There was almost no place for imported opium.]

[In 1884, domestic opium production far exceeded imported opium, and it began to be exported.]

[Tax revenue from opium cultivation reached one million taels per year.]

[All provinces have made the promotion of poppy cultivation a priority item in the assessment of officials.]

[Growing opium became something that seemed to benefit both the government and the people. Not only did it spread uncontrollably, but the people who grew opium also became addicts.]

[During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, the area under opium poppy cultivation accounted for about six-tenths of the cultivated land in each province.]

[Over time, the result is that grain production becomes less and less, and there is no grain in the private sector, and there is no grain in the national treasury either.]

I still don’t know if I can pass…



(End of this chapter)