The war was fought not only on the front lines, but also on the home front, on the land.
In early July, standing on the Ba Bridge, watching another batch of ships loaded with grain heading east along the Weishui River, Xiao He and Zhang Cang, the two officials guarding the court, breathed a heavy sigh of relief, looked at each other, and said happily:
"Thanks to the regent's order last year that all public and private fields in Guanzhong were planted with wheat, but now it's life-saving!"
After the beginning of spring, when Heifudong left Hangu, the heroes of the anti-king of Guandong only lived on the old grains of Qincang, but did not engage in production. Many places were affected by wars and the fields were abandoned. Therefore, Guanzhong, known as the "Land of Abundance",
He was responsible for the main supply of military rations, and hundreds of thousands of grains of grain went east every month, so that after midsummer, Xianyang warehouses became increasingly empty.
Seeing that the millet is not yet ripe, the warehousemen will inevitably get angry. Fortunately, during May and June, the vast wheat fields in Zhengguo Canal and Shanglin are already golden...
Wheat has been cultivated by people in the Central Plains for a long time, but at the beginning, the cultivation season of wheat was the same as that of the original crops such as millet and broomcorn millet, that is, it was planted in spring and harvested in autumn.
But gradually, Zhou farmers who were good at growing crops discovered that wheat was more cold-resistant than millet but not as drought-resistant. The most suitable time for wheat to be sown and grown was not spring but autumn. So when an unknown Zhou farmer
When you try to save a handful of wheat seeds for planting in early autumn, winter wheat, also known as "sunwheat", comes into being.
Since most food crops in the north are planted in spring and harvested in autumn, there is often a shortage of crops every summer, causing a food crisis. However, the emergence of Sumai has given the Central Plains region of dry land agriculture a solution other than hoarding old grain, planting soybeans, and fishing, hunting and gathering.
: It is harvested just in the summer, so it can continue to dry up and alleviate food shortages. Once there is a disaster year and the harvest fails in autumn, the wheat can be replanted immediately to prevent the spread of the disaster.
In addition, for the same acre of land, the yield of wheat is far greater than that of millet, so wheat has been taken seriously and has successfully become one of the five grains.
At least in the Zhou Dynasty, wheat was included in the five grains, and it was a custom to worship ancestors: "In the fourth year of Mengxia in the Wei Dynasty, Wang Chu prayed in the ancestral temple, and tasted wheat to Taizu."
Tasting new wheat in June has also become a grand day. It was on the day when Jin Jinggong tasted wheat that he went to the toilet with abdominal distension and fell in and drowned...
But even with so many benefits, Sumai is just a backup for millet. The eating habits are the most stubborn. The people of Zhongxia still eat mainly grains, and they regard this as the difference between themselves and the barbarian Rongdi.
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Eating wheat is also wheat rice, but when it is steamed, the rice tastes very bad. As the saying goes, "wheat, rice, and bean soup are all eaten by savages and farmers," and they are eaten as a last resort.
After taking charge of Guanzhong last year, Xiao He informed Hei Fu of this current situation:
"In Guandong, wheat rice is the food for mourning when parents are buried. Some officials eat wheat rice without paying new rice, and they are called honest officials."
"What's more, in Chu, where rice is the staple food, wheat rice is not even as good as the broken rice used to feed pigs and dogs. Chu people are used to eating rice all year round. They despise wheat rice and think it is coarse, so they refuse to eat rice.
He eats it, but refuses to sow it; his grandfather did not sow it, so his descendants do not know it.”
Even though mills and rollers were introduced later, the situation did not improve much.
Ten years ago, Nei Shiteng listened to Heifu's suggestion and used wheat flour to feed the captives who migrated to the Kanto region. Although the wheat flour is delicious, not many people can accept it. No joke, among the common grain foods, suddenly
When it comes to pasta, it is a typical crooked way, which is of the same nature as "the collapse of etiquette and the destruction of music".
Because there have always been rumors that "wheat is poisonous", the hundreds of thousands of households who moved to the east of the Kanto region thought that the Qin people were going to poison them and almost rebelled. Later, although they reluctantly ate it, they still felt that they were not going to die soon. Some people even shed tears while chewing crispy wheat cakes...
It wasn't until they were still alive and well several years later that the group of immigrants gradually accepted this food, and pasta even became a unique snack among their group.
But people who are speechless, as long as they have a chance, they will plant millet instead of wheat...
This was true even for the relocation of captives, not to mention the Qin people. Therefore, throughout the Qin Shihuang era, it was difficult to increase the wheat planting area in Guanzhong. Until Heifu took over, it was still "the custom in Guanzhong was not good at growing wheat."
But the world was in turmoil, so Hei Fu asked Xiao He and Zhang Cang to plan how to store grain. He expected that there would be a famine the following summer, and a large amount of summer-ripened wheat would be needed to relieve the emergency.
There is no other option but to rely on mandatory administrative orders.
So Heifu asked Lu Jia to plant wheat and brought it up to the point of being on the line:
"In ancient times, there was a history written by Hou Ji. He didn't write about the grains. As for the wheat and straw, he wrote about them. This shows that the sage attaches great importance to the five grains. Wheat and grain are the most important. Nowadays, the customs in Guanzhong are not good at planting wheat. It is the loss of the emperor and the queen's soil. The regent has issued an edict to control the internal history of millet, so that the people in Guanzhong can plant wheat in a better way, and the order will not come later."
In order to encourage people to grow wheat, Heifu, who was originally a rice party member, even moved food made from wheat noodles into the official canteen of Xianyang Palace. He and the officials of Jiuqing had millet porridge for steamed buns every day, feeling sad in their hearts and stomachs, and looking sad in their faces. But he had to show his joy and praise.
The result that makes people laugh or cry is that the imperial physician Ling Xia Wuji tried his best to dissuade this and even told Hei Fu:
"This poison is extremely poisonous. The regent tested the poison himself. Does he want to abandon the world and ignore it?"
Heifu:???
…
After being warned like this, Heifu had a black question mark face at that time.
Xia Wuqi has a convincing saying: "Sumai is planted in autumn and matures in summer. It has sufficient Qi in all four seasons, so it naturally has both cold and warm temperatures. It is suitable for the grains to be hot and the bran to be cold. Therefore, when using Sumai soup, do not allow the skin to be mixed, and the clouds will be warm and bright. The noodles cannot relieve heat and troubles, and are even more poisonous with elixirs!"
This means that the whole wheat must be cooked with water and eaten together with the soup and water, that is, grain food, and cannot be processed into flour. Otherwise, it will lead to poisoning, "madness", and even death!
This statement is obviously ridiculous. Heifu’s descendants have never heard that eating steamed buns and bread will poison people.
It’s not that Lao Xia was stupid. Even a few hundred years later, in the Tang Dynasty, when people in Chang’an were eating Hu cakes every day, Sun Simiao, the king of medicine, actually thought wheat was poisonous and scared many people into abandoning wheat flour and millet.
Heifu had no choice but to launch an academic campaign, and asked Chen Wujiu to turn his students against his teachers, and wrote many easy-to-understand articles to refute and refute the rumors.
Because the foolish man has a deep-rooted understanding of "wheat is poisonous", he is not even allowed to spread rumors: "Eating pasta and drinking noodle soup can detoxify the mild poison."
So there was the custom of "turning the original soup into the original food"...
While fighting against long-standing customs, Heifu also distributed free seeds to poor people who did not have wheat seeds, causing farmers to vigorously study techniques to increase wheat yields per acre.
Farmers are good at farming. They thought that by soaking the seeds with soy sauce and silkworm seeds before sowing, the wheat seeds can absorb a considerable amount of moisture before sowing, and the silkworm seeds can also absorb enough water, and they can be planted together when the dew is the most. Once in the ground, the wheat seeds will get the water they need to germinate.
"When the freeze thaws in spring, hoe again. When the elm pods are reached, pour the rain and stop, and then hoe again when the soil turns white. If so, the harvest will be doubled."
After intensive farming, when the wheat was ripe in May and June, the public wheat fields beside the Zheng Guo canal had a bumper harvest. The yield was higher than the yield of middle-grade field millet, twice that of medium-grade field millet, and nearly as much as that of low-grade field millet.
Four times, much higher than beans.
Relying on the policy of forcibly purchasing surplus grain implemented by the government, Xianyang's warehouses, which had already bottomed out, were filled to the brim again.
A scene that made people laugh or cry appeared. The farmers in Guanzhong were reluctant to sell millet. Now they are selling wheat to the government, but everyone is rushing to sell it.
Good guy, they still prefer to eat millet rather than noodles. Heifu led by example and insisted on eating noodles for more than half a year, but it was all in vain...
The mouth and stomach are indeed the most conservative organs in the human body. Coupled with the rigid thinking, there is no way to change it in just a few years.
"The unruly people are all unruly people!" When Heifu, a southerner, learned about this, he had no choice but to scold him while secretly eating white rice.
But there is no other way now. The wheat is either ground or crushed, and is being shipped to the east one after another. Just like the "Battle of Boating" many years ago, it was transported to Maojin, Shaanxi County by a steady stream of grain ships.
Then they went ashore and were loaded into thousands of cars belonging to the Luoyang Shishi family, and transported to the east where they were waiting for food.
But this time the wheat is transported eastward, the moths are also not small.
The new counselor named "Huangshi" admonished Heifu with one thing:
"In the past, Wei and Chu were at war, and the Wei army was short. King Hui of Wei ordered people to use wheat as food for the army. As a result, the soldiers were all sleepy and morale was low. Wu Qi of Chu State quickly transferred a batch of southern rice and millet to the camp and provided it with rice wrapped in lotus leaves.
Soldiers, as a result, the Chu army's morale was greatly boosted and they attacked, but the Wei army was defeated and retreated all the way."
Eating wheat, rice, and millet can actually lead to a decline in military morale and a rise in morale. This is indeed fantastic. Even if Heifu takes the lead in eating, it will be difficult to reverse it.
In order to prevent the army from being "demoralized", the army had to continue to eat millet, while wheat was given priority to the victims.
So, more than ten years ago, the scene where the captives from Shandong "the Qin people want to poison us with wheat" and said goodbye to their relatives in tears while biting into steamed buns and wheat cakes appeared again.
It was the devil named "hunger" who finally defeated customs and rumors.
Especially in the Yingchuan and Dangjun areas, as Zhang Liang said, Qin and Chu were at war here, and the people lost their jobs, and there was a great famine. In some places, every person had five thousand grains of rice, and people ate each other, and nearly half of them died.
In many places, Guanyin soil and tree bark are eaten, so who cares whether wheat is poisonous or not? As long as it is edible, they happily stuff it into their mouths, and then comfort themselves:
"I'd rather die with a full stomach."
And Heifu believes that after they eat the wheat cakes with tears in their eyes, the final result will definitely be: "It tastes so good!"
Along with three hundred thousand stones of wheat entering Yingchuan, a song was also sung in Han and Wei under the instructions of Hei Fu:
"Xiang Ji slaughtered my city, Xia Gong saved my people."
"Xiang Ji took away my food, but Xia Gong gave me wheat."
"Xiang Ji kills my son, and Duke Xia gives him peace..."
Throughout the summer, Heifu did not rush across Han and Wei to attack Chu, but controlled the Han and Wei areas little by little, allowing the army to slowly but resolutely advance eastward.
He also worked hard on propaganda to blame Xiang Ji for all the disasters, pain and chaos in the Han and Wei regions.
We must make Xiang Ji the public enemy of the Central Plains people and the murderer nailed in the history books!
This time, no one in future generations will regret his defeat, let alone lament: "I still miss Xiang Yu!"
So, in early July, when Heifu and his army arrived in Xiangyi, Dang County, to mourn the victims of Xiang Ji's massacre here a year ago, the slogan was also spread throughout Han and Wei:
"The world has been suffering from thieves for a long time!"
