There were only dead oxen, and no fields that were spoiled

Liu Zongyuan wrote an article "Niu Fu", the full text can be summed up in eight words: I was born as a cow, I'm sorry.

It says that the cow is a creature with a burly body, a huge head, curved horns, and sparse fur and thick skin. It chirped like a yellow bell. Braving the scorching sun, he has to plough 100 acres of fields a day. Walking back and forth, the ditches turned out were long and straight. After finishing the farm work, he had to pull a cart to deliver the grain to the official warehouse, but he couldn't eat a bite. The poor are rich by it, and the hungry are fed by it, but they are not paid anything. Sometimes he fell in the mud, and sometimes he fell, which is the life of toiling in the wilderness. When he died, his skin was stripped off, his horns were removed, and nothing of his flesh remained.

Finally, Liu Zongyuan said:

Although the ox has merit, it will not benefit itself. Life is ugly, but it is not ability. Be careful not to complain, so that you may be blessed.

Coincidentally, Liu Yuxi also wrote a "Sighing Cow". The ox was driven by its owner to pull a thousand pounds of things, walk through the mud and climb high slopes, climb mountains and mountains, and finally lame. The lame leg was useless, and the owner took the ox to the slaughterhouse to squeeze out the last of its value.

Liu Liu and the others are naturally not complaining about the cow, they are taking pity on themselves and lamenting their bleak future.

If there is anyone in the world who understands the suffering of cattle best, it is the thousands of farmers. They were busy in the fields, day after day, year after year, supporting the mountains of the empire with their rickety bodies. Industrious, depressed, and eaten cleanly.

There is such a sentence in the Book of Songs: "Morning glory is not a suitcase." "When people look up at the stars, bright "morning glory" shines in the sky, but they can't steer the vehicle back and forth for themselves. Oppression is everywhere, and the pain of exploitation is undoubtedly hidden in it.

What can we hear from the sound of the cow from the depths of history?

Tang] Han Rong's "Five Oxen Picture" (detail). Source: Internet.

The Book of Poetry: No Sheep contains:

Who is the one who has no sheep? Three-hundred-dimensional group. Who is the bull? Ninety. The sheep comes to think, and its horns are full of water. Erniu comes to think, and his ears are wet. or descend to A, or drink in the pool, or sleep or deceive.

In the beginning, people raised cattle to feed on their flesh and use their skin and bones.

Beef is very valuable and is the best meat for sacrifices. The Book of Han contains: "Cows, big animals, and worship heaven and honor." "In ancient times, the ancient sages, ancestors, temples, and great heroes were all used to use too fast, including a cow. This power belongs exclusively to the upper class. The use of cattle for the common people to sacrifice is called "obscenity", and once discovered, it is to be condemned.

Cows, sheep, and pigs are all stocked (whole), and they are too fast. Source: Internet.

In addition to the edible beef, cowhide, horn, and oxtail also have their use value. According to the "Zhou Li", the bow man needs to collect six necessary materials to make a bow, including cow tendon, cow glue and horn. Cow glue is used to drill the horns of the bow, horns are used to make the arrow travel quickly, and beef tendon is used to make the arrow deep. Cowhide can be used to make armor, shields, and snare drums. In addition, the rope of the chariot, the bridle of the horse, and the bag of the sword and arrow are all inseparable from the cowhide. The oxtail was used to decorate the car flag of the nobility, and people called it "旄".

Although the whole body of the ox is a treasure, in real life, people often regard the ox as a symbol of poverty.

Since the pre-Qin period, people have used horse-drawn carriages as the most expensive way to travel. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the economy was withering, and even the emperor couldn't pay attention to it, so he had to take an ox cart when he went out. During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he vigorously suppressed the princes and kings, so that "the princes only had food, clothing, rent and taxes, and the poor or took ox carts". In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the princes and kings of the clan were strictly guarded, and they "rode ox carts and made up people". However, once the economy recovers, the dignitaries will naturally have to sit back in the carriage, and in the unearthed Han portrait stones, almost all of them are chariots and horses.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world fell into war again, and riding an ox cart became a fashion.

On the eve of the Battle of Chibi, when Lu Su persuaded Sun Quan not to surrender to Cao Cao, he said: "Today, Su Yingcao, Cao should return to the township party with Su, and his name is still not lost under Cao. The general welcomes the exercise, and what do you want to do? "If Lu Su surrenders, he can also take an ox cart to travel to Shilin and enter and exit the official career, which shows that the ox cart has entered the upper class.

The price of the ox cart is really an expedient measure for the princes and nobles to maintain dignity in the era of war.

During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wang Dao was afraid of the interior and hid Jiaojiao elsewhere, and after Wang Dao's wife knew about it, she went to check it in person. Wang Dao immediately ordered someone to prepare an ox cart to chase after him, but he disliked the speed on the way too slow, and used the dust whisk handle in his hand as a whip to drive the cattle. After the minister Cai Mo heard about this, he made fun of Wang Dao and said: "The court wants to add the prince Jiuxi." Director Wang didn't hear the meaning at first. Cai Mo also said: "I don't smell anything left, only a short calf cart and a long-handled tail." At this time, the ** nobles and even the emperor used ox carts to travel.

The children of the gate valve especially love the ox cart, and the carriage ride has become a "feast" move. During the time of Emperor Wu of Liang, there were no horseback riders in Jiankang City, and some people rode a small pony to travel and raise the court.

By the Tang Dynasty, the empire was thriving, and the ox cart no longer conformed to the temperament of the aristocracy. After about four centuries of prevalence among the upper classes, the cow returned to where it was supposed to be, in the countryside where thousands of ordinary people lived.

From the perspective of the development history of human society, the quality of power determines the breadth and depth of human beings' use of nature and transformation of nature. The replacement of human power by animal power is a huge leap for human beings.

According to the "Guanzi", the peasants in the Warring States Period had the necessary tools for farming, but "one pun, one cho, one sickle, one chi, one vertebrae, and one do", and agricultural production mainly relied on manpower. We all know that in the Spring and Autumn period, cattle ploughing has already appeared. However, cattle farming was not widely practiced until the Western Han Dynasty.

A farmer will not have any advanced concept of animal power in his mind, and the most important thing for him is to settle an account. How many acres of land do I have in my family, how many people do I have, and how much manpower should I use in one acre of land.

Scholar Mr. Li Genpan pointed out that the size of a small peasant family in the Western Han Dynasty was very small, often three or four. With so few family members, even if the cattle cultivated enough fields, they couldn't take care of them all. If you have limited farmland, it is not cost-effective to feed a cow. Therefore, the most economical option is to spend more effort and put a lot of manpower into the limited farmland, which is what we often say".Intensive farming”。Ploughing cattle is only suitable for those with deep pockets who engage in extensive farming.

Southern Song Dynasty] Li Di: "Wind and Rain Pastoral Return Map". Source: Internet.

At that time, the rulers of the empire had long since noticed the importance of cattle ploughing. When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Zhao Guo, the commander of Sosu Duwei, advocated ox farming: "Rate 12 husbands for the field, one well and one house, so four acres of acres, with a coupling plow, two oxen and three people, the one-year-old harvest often passes more than one mu of Mantian, and the good ones are doubled." However, because of the lack of cattle or the fact that it is not cost-effective to raise cattle, farmers have used manpower to pull plows and reclaim a lot of farmland. Zhao Guo's Daitian method made the people "get more grain with less effort". However, its influence seems to be very limited, and Cui Wei at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty only said that "Sanfu still relies on its benefits".

When we look at history, we often focus on the emergence of technology, but in fact, the diffusion of technology is an equally important thing. One represents innovation, one represents distribution. The diffusion of technology is often affected by the system and the living conditions of the people under the system.

After the Eastern Han Dynasty, cattle farming became common. "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty Wang Jing Biography" contains: "(Jing) moved to Lujiang Taishou. First of all, the people did not know how to plough the oxen, so that the land was surplus and the food was often insufficient. At the county boundary, there is a Shaobi rice field from Chu Xiangsun Shu Ao. Jing Nai drove the people, repaired the waste, taught the use of ploughing, and reclaimed more than that, and the territory was abundant. ”

The people's living conditions are different. The land was annexed by the wealthy clans, and some people were reduced to dependents; After the chaos in the world, the people lived in clans, and there were many dock forts. As a result, the size of the family has become larger, and the cost of raising cattle has been shared, but it is really not possible, and the state or the rich will also borrow cattle. According to the Book of Wei, the house without cattle borrowed cattle to cultivate seven acres of land, and gave the borrower two acres of hoeing land to repay the cattle with labor.

The Northern Wei Dynasty, Sui and Tang dynasties practiced the uniform field system, and in order to persuade the people to teach agriculture and mulberry, they were given cattle for farming. At that time, there were many small and lightweight short ploughs (such as curved ploughs), and one plough and one ox were very common, and the cost of cattle for farmers fell again. A family of five or six, 50 acres of land and a cow became the best configuration that farmers could pursue. Under these circumstances, the grain production of the Tang Dynasty increased greatly, and the people also had a large amount of surplus grain in their homes.

Quyuan plow, also known as Jiangdong plow. Source: Internet.

Du Fu wrote in "Two Songs of Remembrance of the Past":

Recalling the heyday of the Kaiyuan Dynasty in the past, Xiaoyi still hides thousands of rooms.

The rice is fat and the corn is white, and the public and private warehouses are abundant.

There are no jackals on the roads of Kyushu, and the sun rises far away.

For the common people, the smiling faces they bloomed when they looked at the accumulation of their own grains was the greatest significance of the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty.

Ying Shao, a scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty, said in "Customs and Customs": "Cattle are the foundation of farming, the people look up to them, they are the greatest, and the country is strong and weak." ”

The people took root in the farmland and worked hard, provided taxes for the imperial court, and could maintain food and clothing, and did not come out**, which is the most ideal order in the hearts of those in power. Cattle are an indispensable part of this order. Therefore, the successive dynasties have come out of ".Establish the country with agricultureThe idea of prohibiting the folk from killing cattle.

The Han Dynasty stipulated that "the law prohibits the killing of cattle, and those who commit it will be punished". In the Tang Dynasty, those who deliberately killed cattle were sentenced to imprisonment, and they were not pardoned in the year of amnesty. In the Song Dynasty, the crime of slaughtering cattle in the prime of life could lead to death, while the old, weak, sick and disabled cattle had to be reported to the government before they were slaughtered, and they could only be slaughtered after approval. However, the phenomenon of folk killing cattle is still repeatedly prohibited.

A ban has been repeated repeatedly but to no avail, mostly because it is against human nature. The people don't care about the order of the world, and he has only one question in his heart: Is it worth it for me to raise a cow?

Song Ru Chengyi once said to a friend: "What's more, the villain has nothing to do!" The cow eats its strength, and the old slaughter it. ”

The friend replied, "I have to." The old cow is not available, and the slaughter is still half the price of the cow, and the loan is called to buy the strong, and the cultivation is wasted! And And, to raise useless cattle? "It is to the effect that when the cow is old and cannot be used, it can be sold for a good price if it is killed, and then the loan is used to buy another cow, otherwise it will be a waste of money.

Cheng Yi said: "Er's words, those who know the benefits but do not know the righteousness. The foundation of government is nothing greater than making the people prosperous, and those who have good folk customs and insufficient food and clothing are not available. The plague of floods and droughts and borers is also caused by bad intentions. This great Confucian only knows empty talk about righteousness, thinking that as long as everyone does good deeds, they will be able to have enough food and clothing, but he does not know the real situation of the people.

Statue of Cheng Yi. Source: Internet.

Let's do the math. Written in the Daoguang period, it is recorded that the price of a cow ranges from 8,000 to 40,000 wen, with the most common being 20,000 wen. If you don't kill the cattle, in the winter, the people have to give a lot of straw to the cattle as feed, about 70-80 Wen a day, from the tenth lunar month to March of the following year for six months, about 12,600-14,400 Wen, you can buy an inferior cow.

And, in order to survive the winter, many farmers have to use straw as fuel for heating and making fires. Without ploughing cattle, the problem of farming can be solved through manpower, and the rice cannot be eaten raw, and the cold cannot be carried hard. So,Cattle killing is often the most economical option for farmers

Of course, Cheng Yi doesn't have to face such a choice, and he doesn't have to worry about falling into a situation of hunger and cold, he only has the "benevolent government" of "don't kill cattle" in his eyes. In order to achieve such a "benevolent government", the ancient rulers can be said to have made great efforts.

During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Yan Zhitui recorded such a story in the "Yan's Family Motto": During the Xiaoliang period, the people "gave the cow wine as a gift" to a county order, and the cattle looked at the county order before being killed, and the county order still ordered the cattle to be killed for food after laughing. The county order fell asleep after being full of wine and food, and after waking up, "I felt itchy, crawled and scratched the rash, and died of leprosy in ten years."

The Southern Song Dynasty literati Zhou Mi recorded in "Qi Dongye Yu" that after a friend got typhoid fever, he dreamed that he was swallowed by a cow and vowed not to eat beef for the rest of his life after he survived. After waking up from the dream, he sweated profusely and healed in an instant. After holding the precepts for more than ten years, I couldn't help eating beef again, got sick again, and had the same dream, and vowed not to eat before I was liberated. Zhou Mi also took himself as an example: his family did not eat beef in his third life, although he was weak and sickly, he never contracted the plague, even the slaves and maids in the family were no exception. The blessing of not eating beef is a great blessing!

Such stories are endless, and have almost become a social consensus. Its core is one meaning: if you eat beef, you will get blight, and if you quit beef, you will be immune.

In fact, cattle plague often occurred in ancient China, mainly causing cattle deaths, and only sporadic records of human diseases. Obviously, the persuasion to abstain from beef is not based on medical considerations.

In this atmosphere, local governments are committed to realization".Don't kill cattle”。Wang Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty once recorded an incident in which a ** went out and met someone slaughtering a cow, and the cow suddenly broke free, ran to the front of **, and lowered his body as if to complain. And that ** administers justice for the ox, and assigns it to the house of the beloved, so that it may continue to plow the field.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the rural township covenants basically had the content of prohibiting the eating of beef, and even cursed the cattle sellers without permission: "The gods of heaven punished the body, so that the body was plagued, and the family suffered from the epidemic, and the surname was destroyed to pay for the life of this cow!" ”

The strict laws of the state, the restraint of the magistrates, and the advocacy of the village sages constituted a tight net that kept the behavior of the common people strictly confined to the small peasant order designed for them by those in power. But we don't have to underestimate the power of the people. The net is getting tighter and tighter, which actually shows that the resistance is getting stronger and stronger.

After all, nothing in this world is more important than the livelihood of the people themselves.

Ming] Shen Zhou: "Cattle Husbandry". Source: Internet.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, people were always attracted by the violent upheavals in the political realm, but if you look at the countryside, a slow but heavy change may be more indicative of the fall of the empire.

In the countryside south of the Yangtze River, the richest rural village in the country, manpower has once again replaced ox ploughing.

According to Mr. Yu Yunguo's statistics, the population of the Taihu Lake area in the first year of Chongning in the Northern Song Dynasty (1102) was 12855.95 million, the population of the Taihu Lake area from the Yuan Dynasty to the twenty-seventh year of the Yuan Dynasty (1290) was 82280.79 million, with an annual population growth rate of 10 in 188 years. Obviously, the situation of many people and little land in the Jiangnan area was already very serious before the Ming Dynasty. With so little land to feed such a large number of people, the pressure can be imagined.

Farmers have only one option: to seek greater yields on a limited scale, the so-called "intensive farming".

Qing] Chen Mu: "Cultivation and Weaving Atlas" (detail). Source: Internet.

Let's take a look at the four seasons of Jiangnan farmers.

The beginning of summer and Xiaoman are the first peak farming seasons of the year. Before that, farmers had to buy fertilizer, plough cattle and buy farm tools. At this time, cattle dealers from other places will bring their cattle to various cattle shops to peddle them. Wealthy families buy with cash, and many poor families buy in partnership or rent from wealthy households.

After preparing for ploughing, people put in the ploughing of the oxen. At that time, a tool that looked like a nail rake was also popularIron ride, can also plough the ground, the disadvantage is that the efficiency is low, a person can only plow one acre of land a day. However, iron ploughing is deeper than oxen, which meets the requirements of deep ploughing, and there is no shortage of labor at home, so more and more people do not need oxen to plow at all.

In the season of cold dew and frost, summer crops are harvested, winter crops are sown, and the second peak period of the year is coming. After this busy period, most of the farm work in the year is basically over, and ordinary people have begun to sell cattle, and some directly kill and sell meat. Only the rich will keep it up. Although the imperial court is not allowed to sell cattle, there are people who carry out it secretly.

If you don't sell cattle, you have to be careful of thieves in winter. Cattle theft is considered to be the easiest type of theft, as it is impossible for a cow to hide in an inner chamber and steal it easily. Theft often begins with cattle theft. If the stolen cattle are borrowed, it is estimated that the family will have to lose their money.

* High, risky, expensive feed, not many people will continue to raise cattle. As long as the peasants are more diligent and plough five acres of land and harvest two crops in five acres, their income in one year can reach 10 acres. Women can weave, grow flowers and fruits, and subsidize their families. Anyway, in a word, as long as people can do something, then do as much as possible, anyway, there is no shortage of people in this land.

The peasants of Jiangnan have an incomparably strong creativity and have spontaneously explored it."Best business model”。They used a variety of methods: iron instead of oxen, double cropping a year, and men and women weaving ......The output of farmland is increasing, and families are becoming richer, at the cost of everyone becoming more and more tired and suffering, which can be described as a revolution forged by hard work. It's just that no matter how industrious your feet are, you can't keep up with the speed of the steam engine.

Scholar Huang Zongzhi called it ".Involution", i.e. "growth without development".

There is another phenomenon that can be used as a footnote in the era of involution: at that time, the sedan chair gradually replaced oxen and horses as the mainstream means of transportation in society. And in transport, a special profession appeared - porter. The work that should be done by cattle and horses has been moved to the shoulders of people.

The British missionary McGowan once recorded the figure of these low-level Chinese: "His back was never straight. His back bent slightly forward, and tilted to the left. This was due to the fact that he had to do the work of carrying it himself,......Strong farmers apply fertilizer to their fields to increase soil fertility and carry water from their fields for irrigation during the dry season, both of which are done from the left shoulder. When the crops are ripe, they have to harvest them home and send the surplus to the city miles away to sell, still transporting it on their shoulders. The use of trains, horse-drawn carts, ox carts and heavy livestock to transport them was really unattainable for the farmers of this land. ”

Man or cow, which is miserable?

References:

Zhu Xi, The Book of Poetry, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1987

Huang Zongzhi, Smallholder Families and Rural Development in the Yangtze River Delta, Zhonghua Book Company, 2000

Cheng Nianqi, "Cattle Ploughing in Ancient Chinese Economic History", Shi Lin, No. 6, 2005.

Ren Zhaojie, "No Eating Beef, No Epidemic at Home: A Study on the Story of "Bull Ring" in Ancient China", Shilin, No. 5, 2019.

Wang Jiahua, "Environment, Farming and Cattle Farming: Breeding and Service of Cattle in the Jiangnan Region in Modern Times", China Agricultural History, No. 1, 2008.