Friends who have watched historical dramas may frequently see the scene of "disaster relief": a senior official leads the masses to set up a porridge shed in a certain place, and the victims line up to receive food. But why do it? Some people may wonder if it is simpler and better for everyone to send some food home and make it themselves.
In ancient times, farmers often fled their hometowns because of low levels of productivity. Poor households struggle to make ends meet due to extremely low food production, especially during natural disasters such as droughts or floods. Moreover, wars continued, many young and middle-aged people were conscripted into the army, the fields were barren, and the women were too old and weak to farm. In ancient times, the lack of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, pests and weeds were a threat to crops, leading to famine in many families during disaster years.
Faced with the tragedy of children starving to death due to lack of food, people began to **. In order to prevent unrest, the official will send ** to the disaster area to open a warehouse and release grain. One common method is to distribute food per capitation or, more commonly, to set up porridge sheds for people to drink. But why not just distribute the grain or cook the dry rice? The main reason is that the food for disaster relief is limited and cannot be directly distributed, while boiling porridge can solve the problem of food and clothing for more people with less rice and water.
Secondly, there are many hungry people. Not only are there hungry people in the local area, but there are also many people who have fled the famine, and the limited food cannot meet such a large number of needs, so they can only be solved by boiling porridge.
Third, it's simple and easy. The warehouse stores not only rice, but also various whole grains, which require a lot of manpower to make noodles or steamed buns, while making porridge is much simpler.
The last reason is that drinking porridge helps digestion. Hungry people who have not eaten for a long time eat dry rice or steamed buns, which is not only not conducive to digestion, but may also lead to choking. This is not the case with drinking porridge.
In general, the ancient disaster relief method of setting up porridge sheds may seem troublesome, but there are many rationalities behind it. In the face of disaster, we need more wisdom and tolerance, and this simple but practical approach may give us some inspiration in some aspects. In the face of various challenges in modern society, we may be able to draw lessons from the wisdom of the ancients and find new ways to solve them.
In addition to traditional methods such as setting up porridge sheds, what other innovative ways do you think can help solve the problem in the face of disasters?