The "Water Margin" describes Liangshan Bo as this - the village is named Water Margin, the moor is called Liangshan, there are a thousand rivers and harbors, and it is eight hundred miles in all directions.
You must know that the diameter of Dongting Lake is less than a hundred miles, the diameter of Taihu Lake is only a hundred miles, and the longest diameter of Xingkai Lake shared by China and Russia is less than 200 miles from north to south! If Liangshanbo calculates the radius based on the circumference
800 miles, with a diameter of more than 200 miles, wouldn’t it make it the largest lake in China? - Therefore, many readers do not believe this is true, but think it is a nonsense written by a literati who "takes it with his hand and writes it with his pen". Moreover,
There are no such huge lakes in Shandong today.
However, in fact, in the Song Dynasty, there was indeed a huge lake in Liangshan Mountain, which was recorded in many historical documents.
According to ancient documents, in the first year of Kaiyun in the Later Jin Dynasty (944), the Yellow River burst in Huazhou (now the old Hua County in the east of Hua County, Henan Province). The river spread hundreds of miles eastward and surrounded Liangshan Mountain with accumulated water, forming a huge lake.
According to "History of the Song Dynasty·Hequ Zhi": In the third year of Tianxi of the Northern Song Dynasty (1019), the Yellow River broke through Huazhou again, "Li Chan (chantang), Pu, Cao, Yun, and poured into Liangshan Lu", and the water area continued to expand.
In the tenth year of Xining (1077), the river broke through Cao Village in Chanzhou (now Puyang, Henan, where the old government was located in Dunqiucheng, Qingfeng County, Henan), and merged eastward with Liangshanluo; in the fifth year of Yuanfeng (1082), the river broke through Zhengzhou and overflowed into
Li Jinyang Wugou Tiaoma River was summarized in Liangshan. In the seventh year of Qingli (1047), Han Qi went out to Zhiyunzhou and passed by Liangshanbo. He wrote a poem describing the vastness of the water town Zeguo, which can be mutually confirmed with the narrative in "Water Margin":
The huge swamp is boundless, and all the boats are supported for the whole day. The fishermen are frightened and blow their cymbals, and the waterfowl carry flags on their backs.
Pumi is as covered as a harbor, and the mountains are as distant as peng. I don’t know that in the lotus root, there are mosquitoes and flies in the daytime.
There is a story mentioned in "Shishuo Supplement" and "Shao's Aftermath of Hearing and Seeing": Wang Anshi was very talkative about his reform, and there was a villain who followed the trend and came up with an idea to cater to him: "Drain the water from the 800-mile lake in Liangshan Bo and build farmland.
Then the profit will be huge." Wang Anshi smiled and said slowly: "This method is good, but where will the released water be placed?" Liu Ye, who was present, satirized him and said: "
Wouldn't it be enough to dig another eight hundred-mile lake next to it?" - The person who came up with the idea, of course, wanted to drain the water from Liangshanbo through the Yellow River, but it was misunderstood and became a common practice among anti-reform legalists in Wang Anshi's era.
The political joke brought up.
However, in the more than 100 years since the Yellow River burst in the first year of Kaiyun (944) to the Zhenghe period (1119-1125), the Zeguo formed around Liangshan, even if the "eight hundred miles radius" is not the result of actual measurement, it is only an estimated figure.
"Water Margin" writes that during the Zhenghe period of the Song Dynasty, there was a large lake in Liangshan with a radius (circumference) of several hundred miles. There is no problem. It can be seen that the record in the novel is not groundless.
According to historical records: In the late Xuanhe years of the Northern Song Dynasty or during the Jingkang period, fisherman Zhang Rong gathered hundreds of boatmen in Liangshanbo and attacked the Jin army from time to time. After Jingkang, the Jin soldiers went south to attack the Song Dynasty. Liangshanbo was also under the control of the Jin soldiers, but due to
The land is thick with reeds and the waters are vast, making it easy to escape and difficult to capture. Therefore, it has been a base area for the anti-Jin guerrillas in the early Southern Song Dynasty. Later, the Yellow River returned to its old course and Liangshanbo gradually shrank. However, the Liangshanbo area has fallen and returned to the territory of the "Great Jin Kingdom"
In the sixth year of Zhenglong of Emperor Xizong of the Jin Dynasty (the 31st year of Shaoxing reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty, 1161 AD), the warship of Wan Yanliang, the lord of the Jin Dynasty, to attack the Song Dynasty passed by here and was in a dilemma due to the drying up of water. According to the 21st anniversary of Emperor Shizong of the Jin Dynasty.
According to records in 1181 (the eighth year of Chunxi reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty, AD 1181), most of the land here has dried up and turned into land, and local farmers can "grow whatever they want". Due to years of war, the Yellow River embankments have been in disrepair, and the river often bursts and flows to lower areas.
, floods gathered in Liangshan Bo again. Until the end of the Yuan Dynasty when Hu Han traveled north, the sight of Liangshan Bo was still "magnificent and unexplained, with sails gathering in the wind". After the Ming Dynasty, the landization trend of Liangshan Bo accelerated, and by the first year of Jingtai, Daizong of the Ming Dynasty (
Around 1450), there were only about eighty miles left in the radius. In the sixth year of Jingtai, the Ming Dynasty carried out a relatively thorough rectification of the Yellow River Shawan breach, and finally the remaining eighty miles of lake water dried up to a flat land. Now there is only one
Chapter completed!