In August of the third year of Wanli, heavy rain came late in the Jianghuai River, but it was slow and fast, and never stopped.
Qinghe County, Jiangsu Province, Hou Erba from the Eleven Fort in Gaoyan Village finished pulling out the last few grains of rice in the bowl, then picked up the earthen pot next to him, and poured out the already pulpy pumpkin soup like a giant whale sucking water. Drink half of it.
Looking at the half-grown girl squatting next to him and swallowing her saliva, he put down the earthen pot, took out a handful of fried rice grains with shells from his arms, put them on the stove and said to her: "Well, these can be used as snacks for you. Eat. Dad is out patrolling the embankment."
His wife Lin saw him giving her daughter rice grains to eat again, and said to the side: "These are for you to satisfy your hunger. What are you giving her to eat?" After saying that, she glanced at her daughter who did not dare to reach out. The girl was so frightened that she was about to cry.
Hou Er stood up and scolded: "You silly woman, why are you trying to scare her?" He bent down and swept the rice grains on the stove into the palm of his hand, handed it to his daughter and said with a smile: "Eat, Dad still has a lot. , I also need to bring some for Uncle Tian who is on shift. Just eat it, it’s okay.”
After saying that, Hou Er stood up, put on a blackened raincoat, and a patched bamboo hat, and tied two cotton ropes tightly under his chin.
Lifting up a gong lying on the ground at the door of his house, Hou Er left the shack-like thatched house and walked barefoot into the rain.
...
At this time, everyone in Qinghe County had been mobilized. The county magistrate Ma Shengming personally led the team and was patrolling the Gaojiayan embankment in the heavy rain.
Tian Zhixing, a resident of the Eleventh Fort of Gaojiayan who accompanied Magistrate Ma, was already like a mud monkey, with his body and face covered in mud and water.
He sat on the ground and put on the straw sandals he had just thrown off. He stood up and took off the bamboo hat on his head. He let the rain fall on his face and wiped it several times. Only then did he look like a man.
Putting on his bamboo hat, Tian Zhixing shouted loudly to Ma Shengming: "Old parents, I have arranged the patrols in this fort, and they are all patrolling with gongs. Don't worry. The rain is too heavy, it's about to reach me." Drink some ginger soup at home to keep you warm."
Ma Shengming didn't seem to hear, and just looked at Hongze Lake in the rain.
The Gaojiayan Embankment, which is 14 feet wide at the top of the dam, is now made of loess and planted with willow trees. Half a month ago, this embankment was a beautiful traffic thoroughfare and a major exit of Qinghe County.
Ma Shengming, who passed by Gaojiayan to see someone off half a month ago, clearly saw a slope covered with grass and willow trees under the embankment. This large slope with a length of several hundred feet slowly sloped down along the embankment and penetrated into the distance. In Hongze Lake.
At that time, Ma Shengming still thought, this is not a levee? It is a mountain. No matter how big the flood is, it cannot break open such a levee. At most, it can overflow from the top of the mountain.
The embankment at that time? It was far away from the lake. Ma Shengming clearly remembered that he saw several shepherd boys leaving cattle to graze by the lake and playing in the lake. Magistrate Ma, who had studied for more than 20 years, stood on the embankment. When you look at them, the shepherd boys look like ink dots in an ink painting, which evokes only poetry.
Of course? That poetic feeling has long since disappeared. From the night he returned to the county town, the rain has been heavy and small without stopping. Hongze Lake, which was quiet and gentle half a month ago, now seems to have a giant dragon. Rolling over and over at the bottom of the lake, it brought up rows of huge turbid yellow waves, which hit the embankment directly.
Ma Shengming, who has been living and eating on the embankment these days, watched helplessly as the lake water came over from a distance, tens of feet a day. In just ten days, it rushed to the embankment. The two-foot-tall willow tree that originally took root under the embankment,
At this moment, he was already out of sight, not even in the roaring lake with white foam floating on it.
He wiped the rain off his face and continued to patrol the embankment with a sullen expression. Seeing that he was not going back, Tian Zhixing had no choice but to follow behind, cursing: "God, it rains so heavily in the autumn, but it's an act of mischief!"
"
Before he finished speaking, as if in answer to his curse, there was a crackle from the depths of Hongze Lake, lightning filled the dark sky, and then bursts of thunder rolled over.
Tian Zhixing's ears suddenly perked up. He had clearly heard just now that along with the thunder, there were bursts of gongs.
The thunder was far away, and the gong sounded. Ma Shengming also heard it, just in front of them, with a sense of panic, faintly coming through the rain curtain.
Ma Shengming hurriedly ordered: "Quick! Everyone gather forward!" The captains of the forts who followed him quickly ran back in the rain, calling for their young men to gather over there.
...
As Ma Shengming ran, he heard the sound of the gong becoming clearer and clearer. He was running so fast that he suddenly slipped and fell to the ground, falling and chewing mud. The people around him hurriedly helped him up, and Ma Shengming didn't care about the mud and water on his body.
Get up and run.
After running for half an hour, Ma Shengming, who was almost out of breath, finally saw someone beating a gong outside the foot of the embankment in front of him. At his feet was a gurgling pipe with water. Looking down from the embankment, he couldn't tell how big the pipe was.
Looking carefully, there was no river outside the gong. Instead, there was a woman covered in patches, beating the gong anxiously and crying.
When Ma Shengming was sliding down the embankment, he suddenly saw a clay figure jumping out of the gushing mud. The clay figure wiped his face and shouted something at the woman.
The woman who was holding the gong was at a loss, so she dropped the gong and reached out to grab him.
The clay figure opened the woman's hand, stretched out his hands and feet, and threw himself there as if trying to block the torrent of water gushing outward.
Ma Shengming let out a cry from his throat and rolled down the slope. Before he could get up, he was dizzy and saw another scene that he would never forget:
The woman bent down and picked up the gong, struck it twice, and looked around blankly. Seeing Ma Shengming and others running over in the rain, she threw the gong down again.
She tugged on the skirt of her clothes, wiped her face, shouted, "Master!" and jumped in from the pipe!
Tian Zhixing, who was beside Magistrate Ma, shouted, "Hou Er, Hou Er's family! Come out quickly!" With a cry in his throat, he rushed forward while rolling and crawling.
The strong men of the government office next to Magistrate Ma also rushed over, and everyone gathered around the pipe and shouted wildly. But they could only see that the water like yellow mud soup had become smaller, and a man used a shovel to dig five or six feet into it.
No one was found either.
Tian Zhixing wiped the tears and rainwater from his face and yelled, "There is a whirlpool in it and you can't fish it out! Fill it in quickly, otherwise these two people will die in vain!"
Ma Shengming could swear to God that he had never experienced such an emotion: That day, he used a shovel he had never touched before, and dozens of men following him, while choking, he filled in a shovelful of soil and swallowed it.
In the midst of the crisis of two lives...
...
Since the birth of Chinese civilization, the struggle against floods has been engraved in the bones and souls of the Chinese people. The three great rivers, the Yellow River, the Huaihe River, and the Yangtze River, have not only nurtured the nation, they have also given life to China throughout the history of civilization.
People bring about serious disasters again and again.
During the war between the Song and Jin Dynasties, Du Chong, who stayed in Tokyo in the Northern Song Dynasty, broke the river in Huaxian County, Henan Province in order to prevent the Jin soldiers from going south. This river crossing changed not only the war situation between the Song and Jin countries, but also changed the entire Chinese nation——
Three large rivers, which have had considerable management experience since the Qin and Han Dynasties, are in a mess.
Before the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yellow River had a separate channel that entered the sea in Hebei, and the Huaihe River also entered the sea alone. However, after Duchong broke through the river, the Yellow River went south and took away the Huaihe River channel, which was known in history as "Diverting the Yellow River to Seize the Huaihe River".
Because the Yellow River is high and the Huaihe River is low, after the Huanghuai River merged, the Huaihe River water could not compete with the Yellow River. The sediment brought by the Yellow River accumulated year by year, causing the two rivers to flood almost every year. The domino effect caused by Du Chong eventually formed the Yellow River and the Huaihe River.
A series of lakes including Hongze Lake at the intersection, and eventually the Huaihe River, which originally had its own outlet to the sea, became a tributary of the Yangtze River.
Now, the three major rivers that originally had their own drainage basins formed a complex situation of interconnected water potentials, and the difficulty of water control for the Chinese nation doubled. After the early Ming Dynasty, the Grand Canal that ran through these basins was located in between, and the imperial court tried to maintain the idea of water control for water transportation.
It has increased the difficulty of governance by several orders of magnitude.
Therefore, Zhu Yijun chose the sea-cao system instead of the river-cao system because it was not only necessary to stop the financial bleeding and revitalize Jiangnan, but also the only choice to completely control the floods - yes, there is no other way to completely cure the floods that have ravaged the Ming Dynasty for nearly two hundred years.
Pan Jixun led water conservancy experts from across the country to investigate for a year and came to the final conclusion: water transportation could only be abandoned!