Grand Canal in Sui and Tang Dynasties: Underground Brilliance

In the past, there were many conventional and fixed views in history books, all of which defined Emperor Yang Di as a very bad ruler, saying that he was wasteful, militaristic and extravagant, and soon the country was hollowed out, and the Sui Dynasty became a very short-lived dynasty, a flash in the pan. The criminal was identified as the Emperor of Yang Di.

However, with the Grand Canal, the situation has completely changed.

Yang Di proclaimed himself emperor in 605, and his father, Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, succeeded him. His reign time was 17 years and 12 years respectively. During his reign, he did a great thing, that is, with the help of the whole country, he dug the Grand Canal. This is his great talent and has made great achievements for the country, the nation and history.

Now, it seems that the Grand Canal of Emperor Yang Di has made at least the following six contributions in history: First, it connects the east, west, north and south of China, realizing the first real integration and unification in the history of China. In ancient times, long-distance land migration could only rely on horseback riding, ox carts and walking, and it was very difficult and slow to climb mountains and wading. However, human beings have long recognized that water can be used, and it can be crossed by boat or even across the sea, which is fast and efficient, and is often much more convenient than taking dry roads. Putting people and things on the boat, people rowing, sailing, or lifting the sluice can walk dozens or even hundreds of miles a day, which is really a leap in human behavior. The ship is large, capable of transporting soldiers, horses, grain, forage, coal and stones, with many varieties, which greatly broadens the space for human activities and can even organize effective large-scale state activities. However, China's topography is high in the west and low in the east, and the river flow direction is basically from west to east, not from north to south. Emperor Yang Di decided to dig the North-South Grand Canal and simply connect the east, west, north and south with water to form a water network, turning several natural water systems into a large water system. Isn't this a big game? With the Grand Canal, he can truly and completely bring all the territory of China under his own kingship, just like holding it in his arms and firmly belonging to himself. In the past history, no emperor has done this. This is unprecedented.

Second, dozens of prosperous cities along the river were born at once. There is a river first, then a town. The latter is born of the river and thrives on it. This is a great thing. A big city means that the population is relatively concentrated and talents are gathered, and there is a division of labor due to needs, such as transportation, handling, tax collection, management, shipbuilding, warehousing, goods distribution, commerce, hotels, restaurants, beauty streets, song and dance entertainment, schools, etc. In short, the more you gather, the more famous you are, and eventually it will become a climate, leaving a permanent memory in history. The Grand Canal is the mother of the city, blessed with many children.

Thirdly, the Grand Canal in Sui Dynasty created three world cities: Yangzhou, Xi and Beijing. Yangzhou is the starting point of the Grand Canal, Xi 'an is the midpoint and Beijing is the destination. The Grand Canal has turned these three points into a large-scale city, a capital city or an economic metropolis, and has become the political center, economic center and cultural center of the whole country, with far-reaching influence.

Fourth, it brought the Central Plains culture to the north and south, and also brought the nomadic culture in the northern grassland and the Yumisan tea village culture in the south to the Central Plains, realizing the diversity, complementarity and multiplication of Chinese culture.

Fifth, the collusion of several major water systems has promoted the integration and exchanges between ethnic groups and international exchanges between China and foreign countries. The Grand Canal seems to connect the hands and feet of the Silk Road. On the one hand, it connects the surrounding Mediterranean with the culture of Central Asia and the inland of China, and radiates it out; On the other hand, it links the northern minority culture with the Han culture in the Central Plains, which promotes the formation, consolidation and growth of the big family of the Chinese nation. The cultural exchange between the two places was brilliant, fruitful and far-reaching in later generations because of the excavation of the Grand Canal in Sui Dynasty.

Sixthly, the Grand Canal in Sui Dynasty ushered in the prosperity of Zhenguan in Tang Dynasty, which laid the foundation for Tang Wenhua's rise in the world. Although the Sui Dynasty was short-lived, it brought long-term stability and prosperity to the Tang Dynasty. The foundation of the Grand Canal in the Sui Dynasty was well laid, and the policy of the Tang Dynasty was slightly adjusted, which immediately produced good results and inadvertently added a brilliant example to the victory of dialectics.

It seems that with the Grand Canal as a witness, the case of Emperor Yang Di is well-founded and doomed to be overturned.

Half on the ground and half underground. If the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is half dry and half full; At that time, the Grand Canal in Sui and Tang Dynasties was half on the ground and half underground.

How do you say this? The capital of Sui Dynasty is Luoyang, with Chang 'an in the west and Luoyang in the east. To build the canal, we should start from Yangzhou, go northwest first, obliquely cross the Huaihe River Basin in Anhui, cross the northeast of Henan, enter the Yellow River Basin, and reach Luoyang, which is the second half. Then go northeast, pass through the southeast of Hebei, enter the Haihe River basin, and reach Zhuo Jun, that is, the upper part. Together, the word goes as a whole.

The Sui Canal was built in 605, and 3.6 million migrant workers dug an economic canal to connect the Yellow River and Huaihe River. In the same year, 65,438+10,000 migrant workers dredged the Guhan ditch to connect the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River, forming the second half. Three years later, with more than one million migrant workers in Hebei, Yongji Canal was dug to the south of Beijing, forming the upper part. Two years later, the Jiangnan Canal was reopened and reached Yuhang. At this point, * * * used more than 5 million migrant workers to complete the 2700-kilometer Grand Canal in six years, making it one of the greatest projects in the world.

This canal has been in operation for more than 500 years. After the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, it declined at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty due to siltation of some rivers. Instead, it was the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. After the Yuan Dynasty replaced the Jin and Southern Song Dynasties, it set the capital as the capital, straightened out the north and south of the Grand Canal, and stopped taking Luoyang and An, shortening it by more than 900 kilometers and running it for more than 700 years until today.

The Grand Canal of Sui and Tang Dynasties declined 700 years ago. What about its remains today? This is a big problem worthy of serious investigation and study.

After the field trip, I was shocked: still there! Not completely lost as people think.

The situation is more complicated: some river sections merged into the later Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, mainly at one end and one end, such as the Jiangnan Canal south of the Yangtze River and the northern section of Yongji Canal north of Linqing, Shandong Province, all above the water, visible and tangible. Moreover, Guhanguguan and Jiangnan Canal have so far presented a scene of abundant water resources and busy traffic. Some river sections are abandoned, mainly in the middle and upper reaches of Yongji Canal north of the Yellow River. One of the gains of this survey is that the lower limit of the abandonment time is actually a very modern thing, that is, more than 30 years ago. This section of the river is now called Weihe River, and the whole river is above the water surface, so it is easy to find. Sadly, the first half of the Grand Canal in Sui and Tang Dynasties, with a history of 1400 years, was abandoned and was not protected. Instead, it has become a sewer and dirty ditch, which is seriously polluted. Many places have become Longxugou, which is terrible. The main pollution sources are industrial wastewater from Jiaozuo and Xinxiang in Henan Province and industrial and domestic garbage along the coast of Hebei Province. According to the memories of local old boatmen and fishermen, when there was plenty of water in the 1970s, there were always cargo ships passing by on the Weihe River. From the north of Hebi, Henan Province to Tianjin, the transportation of stones and goods was still unimpeded. Once upon a time, due to the rise of roads and railways, coupled with the lack of water, the northern section of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal soon fell into such a tragic situation, which was really regrettable and unimaginable. The third case is buried underground. The reason is that there have been several major floods and river transport in the history of the Yellow River, and the old channel of the Grand Canal was buried in the ground by yellow sand and silt. The length of this part is also very long, generally in the second half of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal, that is, in Henan and Anhui. This part is in very few areas, such as Changgou Town, Sixian County, Suzhou City, Anhui Province. Duan Yiran has an old canal 25 kilometers long. In addition, for most of the second half of the year, the ancient canal of Sui and Tang Dynasties has disappeared on the surface, and nothing can be found. Its existence can only be proved by archaeological excavation. Fortunately, the Grand Canal in Sui and Tang Dynasties existed objectively. There is such a long and wide Grand Canal heritage in the underground loess, which only needs to be excavated and discovered. Practice has proved that this discovery is not difficult, and with a little action, there will be amazing and huge gains. People will exclaim loudly when they see the excavated docks, sunken ships, silos and porcelain. What a prosperous Grand Canal it is! Ancient warehouses, ancient buddhas, ancient cities, ancient docks, ancient bridges and ancient porcelain are generally divided into two types: one is on the ground, such as coastal ancient cities and ancient buddhas; The other is underground, which is ancient bridges, ancient docks, ancient cellars and ancient porcelain excavated by archaeology. The former ancient city walls, such as Liyang Town, Hebi City, Henan Province, and ancient buddhas, such as the Northern Wei Giant Buddha in Dashan City, Hebi City, have been preserved to this day because they are located in high terrain or simply on the top of the hill. The remaining remains are underground, and major discoveries are archaeological achievements. Among them, the most amazing discovery is the ancient granary.

Seven or eight ancient granaries were discovered in Luoyang, Xi and Shangqiu.

In the 1970s, an ancient cellar was dug in the yard of a railway unit in the northeast city of Luoyang. It is very big, with a diameter of 65,438+02 meters and a depth of 65,438+00 meters. It's a deep pit dug in loess, which can store grain. When unearthed, a lot of grain was really found in this semi-carbonized ancient warehouse, layer by layer. Archaeology has confirmed that the location of this ancient barn is next to a water transport pier. Obviously, the ancient granary was built because of a canal beside a river with a width of 100 meters and a depth of 12 meters. Facts have proved that such a granary is a group once it is discovered. On the map, the neat and regular chess board is obviously artificially designed. The warehouse site here is neatly lined with more than 400 pits! A silo can store 250 tons of grain, and the total storage capacity can reach more than 654.38+10,000 tons. What's more gratifying is that a stone tablet was found in the warehouse, which was equivalent to the document file at that time, and recorded in detail, such as where the food came from. It is said that the grain in this warehouse comes from Hebei, Shandong, Henan and Jiangsu. It also records why it was prepared. Besides the people, officials and the army, it is also a grain depot for disaster relief. There are records on the stone tablet about the division of labor of granary managers, weighing, recording, warehouse sealing, supervision, duty, who is the manager and so on. They all have names, as many as 10, and they have been stoned! It's amazing.

It can be seen that this is a regular official warehouse. This warehouse is called Han Jia warehouse. Similarly, there are Luokou Cang, Heyang Cang, Luohui Cang, Taicang, Liyang Cang and Yangshan Cang.

The role of the Grand Canal in water transport is self-evident. How important it is, the Grand Canal is an out-and-out national lifeline.

The famous Luoyang Bridge and Zhou Kaifeng Bridge recorded in historical documents were discovered in recent years. They are all bridges on the canal, all in the city center, with magnificent projects and exquisite designs, which provide conclusive evidence for the prosperous scene of the canal in that year. After experts measured the bridge hole in Kaifeng Qiao Zhou, they buried it back in the soil. Obviously, this is a good underground site museum blank, in the city center.

There are also important discoveries in the remains of the pier. 1999, Liu Zi Village, Baishan Town, Suixi County, Huaibei City, Anhui Province, conducted an archaeological excavation of the site of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal. Dig a stone pier site and dig a canal bed. There were 8 shipwrecks in the Tang Dynasty, and there were dozens of tons of residual porcelain, among which 1200 was a rare porcelain treasure, which was identified as the main porcelain kiln in the Tang and Song Dynasties. After this archaeological excavation, the Grand Canal gained a new title: the Road of Porcelain.

This archaeological excavation was identified as one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in 1999, and Liu Zi Wharf was also identified as a national key cultural relics protection unit. Cultural relics enter Huaibei Museum and are exhibited in special branches. In 2007, similar archaeological excavations were conducted twice in Suzhou City, Anhui Province. It seems that the archaeology of the canal site has gradually entered the field of vision of the cultural relics departments of the cities along the Yangtze River. The opening gongs and drums have already sounded, and the drama is yet to come.

There is also an older Grand Canal of Emperor Yang Di, which is not the oldest. Before that, some canals already existed in the same place. They were the predecessors of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal.

In fact, the Yang Di Grand Canal was built on the basis of previous local canals, and made use of some natural rivers of the Yellow River and Huaihe River, which is both inheritance and development. Of course, there are major breakthroughs and qualitative changes. This also shows that it was a material basis for Emperor Yang Di to complete the Grand Canal in six years with great speed.

Among the canals built by predecessors, the most famous ones are Gorge and Baigou.

Gorge is a canal connecting the Yellow River and Huaihe River in ancient times, and it is the originator of the Central Plains Canal in China. It probably started in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and the Warring States Period, with a history of 2300 years, only 120 years later than the Guhan Valley in the south. The starting point of the gap is between Luoyang and Zhengzhou today, in the north of gongyi city and Xingyang, which leads the Yellow River south, flows into the Huaihe River through Weishi, Taikang and Huaiyang, and its downstream east branch is the famous Bianhe River. The gap is famous because the dispute between Chu and Han took place here, which divided Chu and Han. At that time, the second king city of Hanba was on the Guangwu Mountain in the northeast of Xingyang today, with today's ruins.

Baigou is an ancient canal excavated by Cao Cao for military purposes during the Three Kingdoms period. It began in 204, more than 800 years ago/kloc-0. Its predecessor was the canal on the north bank of the Yellow River during the Warring States Period. First, build Guyang levee, intercept the water from Taihang Mountain, not enter the Yellow River, meet in Chiayi territory, flow eastward along the levee, flow to Xunxian New City through Weihui City, meet with Qishui from Shanxi and flow into the Yellow River. Qi water is a kind of landscape, very clear, also known as clear water. Cao Cao conquered Yuan Shang, located in Linzhang, Hebei Province, to the north, and cut off the water source that was abundant and did not enter the Yellow River. He built a white ditch, flowed to the northeast, and opened the route for providing grain. Later, Baigou formed the predecessor of Yongji Canal built by Yang Di during his northern expedition to Korea. Yongji Canal was called Yu He in Song Dynasty and Weihe River in Ming Dynasty.

Due to the existence of artificial channels in early ancient times, such as Xiakou and Baigou, we have accumulated rich experience in digging technology and canal management, and provided some ready-made rivers for Emperor Yang Di to dig the Grand Canal. Coupled with the use of natural rivers, it was a great success and gave birth to a world-class and unprecedented great project.

However, the gap is good, the white ditch is good, and the trace is hard to find. On-the-spot textual research of the site has become the focus, because it is not enough to have historical documents, but to have substantial demonstration and excavation of the evolution track of the entity.

The Grand Canal of Sui and Tang Dynasties-Underground Glory The two characteristics of the Grand Canal of Sui and Tang Dynasties are that it has a long history, abandoned for many years, and half of it is buried underground, which is a veritable underground glory.

The Grand Canal in Sui and Tang Dynasties is brilliant underground, and your veil is loess. One day, you wake up from your dream, which has been 2400 years. You wake up with countless clothes, possessions and treasures that have accompanied you for 24 centuries, just like an unprecedented grand museum of history, nature and human civilization, to welcome the dawn of 2 1 century; When the news spreads, your brilliance becomes considerable and close, which will make people all over the world dumbfounded, and then cheer together and fall for it! There are two dragons in China, one is the Great Wall, which is entrenched in the high mountains, and the other is the Grand Canal, which spans five major water systems, and half of them are still buried in loess. These two dragons are world-class great human projects, great symbols of Chinese civilization and representatives of China spirit. The Grand Canal is more active than the Great Wall. Today, we praise you and publicize you just to be kind to you and protect you, but not to disturb you, dress you up and make you restless. No, it's not. We will never dig up the Sui and Tang Grand Canal as a whole, and we will never try to open it to water again. We just want to know where you are hiding.

Please tell us your address and we will bow to you, bow to you and tell you our love.