"The old course of the Yellow River starts from Lankao, Henan in the west, along Shangqiu, Yucheng and the borders of Dongming, Caoxian and Shanxian counties in Shandong, enters Dangshan Mountain in the north of the Yangtze River, and then enters the Huaihe River in the east and enters the sea at Taozikou, with a total length of 1,500 miles. Now the Yellow River changes its course through Shandong
, eight hundred miles to the sea. Its old road is like a huge ridge, stretching across the Huaibei Plain from west to east."
The newly-appointed governor of rivers, Yang Wencong, and the governor of water transport, Lu Zhenfei, went to the upper study room to meet the saint. Several prime ministers were also there.
"The Yellow River has been flowing here for nearly 300 years, carrying a huge amount of sediment and accumulating, making it a suspended river above the ground. After the breach and diversion, the upstream water was cut off, and the river channel was abandoned, forming ridges. Nowadays, the disposal of this old channel is also very difficult.
important."
Lu Zhenfei was once one of the Eighteen Arhats in Donglin. He had high seniority and prestige in Donglin. During the Chongzhen period, he served as the Governor of Water Transport and the Governor of Huaiyang. Later, when Hongguang was established, Ma Shiying and others replaced Lu Zhenfei with Tian Yang. Regardless of whether Lu Zhenfei was
There are still many practical achievements in water transportation and local areas.
He also knows the old course of the Yellow River very well.
"The old course of the Yellow River can be roughly divided into three sections. To the west of Xuzhou is the wide river channel. The canal is more than 300 feet wide and generally more than 2 feet deep. The left and right embankments are about 20 miles apart.
The section from Xuzhou to Huai'an is a narrow river channel, and the section from Huai'an to Dayujian is the mouth section."
The Yellow River is different from rivers like the Yangtze River. It is not a relatively fixed river, but a hanging river above the ground. Even its river channel is extremely wide. In addition to river canals, it is mainly composed of river embankments. The Yellow River in the Henan section has large embankments on both sides.
They are extremely far apart, at least twenty miles across.
But the actual river channel is only two miles long, with wide river beaches on both sides.
Normally, people would also plant some miscellaneous grains, such as beans, on the riverbank. However, the riverbank within the embankment is prone to flooding and even no harvest.
Therefore, the river beach land has always been not included in the official land register of the imperial court. This is the same as some sandbanks such as Chongming in the Yangtze River Estuary. They are occupied by local powerful families. Whoever occupies it first belongs to whom, and there is no need to pay taxes, etc.
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Of course, in actual practice, local yamen will still collect some taxes on these beaches.
Not to mention the distance from Lankao to the mouth of the Huai'an River is 1,500 miles. Even from Lankao to Xuzhou, there is still a small 600-mile old road. The 20-mile-wide levee beach, excluding the two-mile-wide canal, is still 18 miles.
Broad beach land, after all, there are four million acres of beach land.
It used to be a river, so the floodplain land could not be considered as farmland, and the harvest was difficult to guarantee. But now that the riverbank has been destroyed and there is no water, it has become a ridge. Then these four million acres of floodplain land can be turned into good farmland.
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The old course of the Yellow River was mostly a high-banked river, generally one to two feet above the nearby ground, and some could even reach nearly three feet. Now it has become the watershed between the Huaihe River and the Shu, Yi, Si and other rivers. An artificial watershed has been created.
Now that the Yellow River has changed its course, for the people in southeastern Henan, southwestern Shandong, and Jiangbei, this means they have finally gotten rid of the huge threat of the Yellow River floods for seven hundred years. What's more, there are still four million shoals that can be turned into fertile farmland.
Nowadays, powerful landowners in many places are trying to exploit the old riverbanks, reclaiming and occupying them at will, and even filling in the river canals.
"I believe that although the water of the Yellow River has been lost, the old road still retains its ability to carry water. It should be dredged, and some dams, reservoirs, and supporting canals should be built accordingly, so that the old road can be fully utilized and transformed.
Turn waste into treasure.”
After all, Zhu Yihai was satisfied with Lu Zhenfei's words. This is how to do practical things.
Therefore, it is feasible to convert the beach area into farmland. Although the beach area's ability to withstand floods, droughts, alkali and other disasters is weaker, it is generally much stronger than some mountainous slopes and dry land.
Dredging the old road well can also provide water conservancy for more than a thousand miles of land on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and reduce flooding.
The current situation of swarms of random land reclamation and occupation in various places will definitely not work. An overall plan is needed.
It is necessary to dredge the river canal to maintain its water-carrying capacity, but also to renovate and utilize it, to build dams, reservoirs, canals, etc. to store water, control floods, and irrigate it. Its vast river beach must also be renovated.
“River beach soils vary, including silt, sandy soil, loam, saline-alkali soil, etc. Silt soil is mainly found in slow-flowing areas along the river bank, while sandy soil is distributed in areas with rapid flow of the original river.
Overall, the soil quality is not high. Taking Xuzhou as an example, only 15% of the beach land can be transformed into upper fields, and only 30% of the middle and lower fields can be transformed. More beach land and lower fields cannot reach this level." Lu Zhenfei gave details.
data.
Zhu Yihai nodded.
"Food is the first priority for the people, and land is the lifeblood of the people. These lands must be comprehensively managed and utilized to turn waste into treasure. Although there is a lot of land, different planting and development can be arranged according to different geology, agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry.
"Comprehensive development of by-products, fisheries," Zhu Yihai instructed, "fertile shoals must be deeply developed into grain fields, and medium- and low-yielding fields must also be appropriately transformed."
"For the rest of the grain crops that can't reach 100 kilograms per mu per year, we can use forest trees, fruit trees, even mulberry trees, cotton, and even build some reservoirs and ponds to raise fish, lotus roots, etc., and we can also use them as pastures and livestock fields.
Cattle and sheep.”
Once developed, there will be four million acres of land. Even if only 15% of it is transformed into good farmland, that means there will be more than one million acres of 600,000 acres of low- to medium-yield farmland with an output of one or two shi per mu.
The other two million acres can also be developed to grow cotton, peanuts, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc., as well as some economic trees and even fruit trees.
The water surface can also be used to store water for flood control, watering, and raising fish and ducks.
After losing the water from the Yellow River, although the river is basically useless, there is no need to worry about annual floods and waterlogging. Not only are the surrounding areas not affected by the Yellow River floods, this river has also become a treasure.
"Your Majesty, if you want to comprehensively plan and manage the old river and make good use of it, the investment will be huge. Now the imperial court has to manage the new river of the Yellow River and build dykes. It is really not easy."
As the governor of water transportation, although water transportation now mainly relies on sea transportation, Lu Zhenfei believes that the canal is of great help to the economy along the route and cannot be abandoned like this.
Nowadays, the canal from Huai'an to Hangzhou is not affected, but the Shandong section of the canal from Jining to Linqing is greatly affected and is basically blocked.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! He suggested that ways should be found to fix it.
But without the Yellow River water, repairing the canal will be very costly.
The Beijing-Hangzhou Canal has always been the economic lifeline of the empire. It is a golden waterway. Every year, there are tens of thousands of canal boats going north and south, not counting private merchant ships. The cities along the canal have also prospered because of the canal.
Suning Changzhen, Susonghang and other famous cities in the south of the Yangtze River.
There are also important towns such as Huai'an, Xuzhou, Jining, Linqing, Liaocheng, and Dezhou, all of which prospered because of the canal.
Nowadays, the Yellow River has changed its course, and Dezhou, Linqing, and Liaocheng have all become yellow flood areas, and they have not yet recovered from the war. Sections such as Jining and Xuzhou are completely blocked and impassable.
In addition, the imperial court vigorously promoted maritime transportation, so now the canal is blocked and broken here in Shandong.
Linqing, which was once known as prosperous as the two capitals, has an urban population of hundreds of thousands, and Liaocheng, known as the armpit of the capital, has gradually dried up its canals. Now even if the whole of Shandong is revived, only Jining, Liaocheng, and Linqing will remain.
During the Qing Dynasty, there were only a few small boats going back and forth. The economy deteriorated, industry and commerce weakened, and their vitality was lost.
South of Jining, although the river section was not affected much, it was greatly affected and weakened rapidly.
There is also Lijin on the coast of Jinan. As the mouth of the Daqing River, it has always been the most important salt flat in Shandong. It has been prosperous for nine hundred years and ranks first among the salt flats in Shandong. The Yellow River took the Daqing River and flowed overseas. The Lijin Salt Flat was completely submerged, causing huge losses.
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Changing the course of the Yellow River benefited the Huai people, but brought hardship to the Qi people.
The people of Shandong hope that the Yellow River will return to where it came from, but it is not easy to restore the old course now, and the cost of management is too high.
Therefore, the imperial court was not willing to flow south again.
Shandong officials proposed a diversion proposal and opened the Majia River in Damingfu to divert the water from the Yellow River and divert it from Shandong and Hebei provinces into the sea.
Although Hebei has not yet been completely recovered, there are still many officials from Hebei in the DPRK. They were originally allies of officials from Shandong and supported the southward movement.
As a result, now that Shandong officials proposed to divert the flow to Hebei, they immediately gave up, and allies turned into opponents.
However, there were too many opponents of restoring the old river course. Firstly, the imperial court was concerned that the cost of managing the old river course was too high. Secondly, Jianghuai officials opposed the restoration of the old course of the Yellow River.
Zhu Yihai himself had no intention of restoring the old road. In fact, the biggest benefit of restoring the old road was to restore the Shandong Canal.
But Zhu Yihai was not willing to restore the Shandong Canal because the cost was too high and there was no water to save it. The biggest problem was that the cost was not proportional to the benefits. It was more advantageous for the court to switch to sea transportation.
Moreover, he also intends to develop the coastal port economy and shift the focus from the canal to the coast.
In the past, whether it was Henan, Shandong, Jianghuai, or Hebei, the core and most developed areas were on both sides of the canal, and all the population and economy were siphoned toward the canal.
Now Zhu Yihai hopes to quickly enter the age of navigation, so he takes this opportunity to simply transfer his economy to the coast.
There is no need to go to great lengths to restore the old course of the Yellow River and the Shandong Canal.
"I have said before that the Yellow River will flow into the sea according to the new route, and the Shandong Canal will not be restored for the time being. Today we will talk about the management and utilization of the old route first, and let's not talk about other things." Zhu Yihai said bluntly.
The second assistant, Wang Zhiren, made further remarks.
"It requires a lot of investment to manage the old roads, but these four million acres of land can be used to develop millions of acres of grain fields, etc., so the value is still very high. I suggest that it is better to put all the old roads into your majesty's imperial estate and use your majesty's internal funds."
Spending money for management not only dredged the canal but also developed the river beach. Your Majesty spent money for management from internal funds, which also saved a lot of money for the imperial treasury."
This was obviously too much to please the emperor.
Wen Anzhi directly opposed it.
“I thought that the imperial court should be mainly responsible for planning and management, and that the old road was a treasured land. However, in the 800-mile yellow floodplain area of the new river, there are also countless villages where the victims have lived for generations. The fields have been submerged and have even become a new river.
The imperial court should move the Shandong people from the new river to the old road and resettle them, build villages and allocate fields."
Wang Zhiren thought that although this seemed good, it would cost money to relocate and dredge rivers and canals. Now that the court spends money everywhere, it must reduce expenses as much as possible. If the land is handed over to His Majesty's Imperial Mansion and managed by His Majesty, then the benefits will also be
Returning to Huangzhuang is quite good.
"Your Majesty, what you said is wrong. This is a lazy political idea. You must do anything wrong!"
