In 1875, when the 4-year-old Guangxu Emperor had just ascended to the throne, there was a super terrifying catastrophe in the world.
At the beginning of this famine, there was only drought and little rain in some parts of the north, and although people were distressed about the withering of the seedlings, they were not particularly anxious, because according to past experience,The drought lasts for a maximum of six months, and when the new rain falls, everything will return to its former state.
Statue of Emperor Guangxu. Unexpectedly, this drought is completely different from the past. The following year, villagers in Beijing and Zhili found that the long-awaited spring rains not only did not come as scheduled, but the area affected by the drought had increased considerably. For a time, the vast areas from Liaoning in the north, Shaanxi and Gansu in the west, and Suzhou and Anhui in the south were all drought-stricken areas, among which the disaster areas in five provinces, including Zhili, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, were the most serious. In many places, there is "no rain all year round", and in some places even the drinking wells have dried up.
From the perspective of modern meteorology, this drought is caused by the extreme weather caused by the "El Niño" phenomenonBut in the eyes of the people of the Qing Dynasty, the terrible scene of thousands of miles of red land must be the condemnation of the heavens and the dispatch of drought to punish the common people.
In order to quench the anger of the heavens, announcements have been issued in various disaster areas, requiring the people to eat vegetarian food. The magistrate of Qingzhou, Shandong Province, also had him chained and then walked like a prisoner to the Longwang Temple outside the city, kowtowing to the statue and praying for rain and praying for an early end to the drought.
But the dragon lord did not bring the rain, and in 1877, the drought further intensified, and an unprecedented Ding Wuqi famine began.
The impact of the drought on the people is first reflected in the food.
According to historical records, the wheat in Yonghe County, Shanxi Province was originally sold for 300 Wen per bucket, but it jumped to 3,650 Wen during the famine. Even large local families can only sell their houses and land to eat.
Poor families who had no money to buy food had to find some bark and grass roots to satisfy their hunger. Gradually, all the bark and grass roots that could be found were eaten, and the poor people used small stones to grind flour and make noodles to eat, or dig Guanyin white mud to satisfy their hunger.
Some people may ask, no matter how poor the poor are, there is always some possessions, why not sell them for food?
In fact, it was not that the poor did not want to exchange food, but that under the threat of "starvation", the assets at that time plunged sharply. "Don't pay one out of ten, don't give three out of 100 things for sale" has become a common thing, and even real estate has become a dead goods, and in some places a courtyard house can only be sold for four or five yuan, while three white buns can be exchanged for a few acres of good land.
It can be seen that at that time, except for food, nothing else was rare. In the words of Zeng Guoquan, the governor of Shanxi at the time, in his recital to the imperial court, the disaster at that time had reached "more than 1,000 miles of red land, and the number of hungry people reached five or six million, and the great disaster was unprecedented......The father of the inquiry, it is said to be a disaster that has not been seen in more than 200 years".
The once-in-a-century catastrophe forced the people to flee in all directions, and the scene of "helping the old and the young, crying halfway, enduring hunger with illness, and stumbling on the road" can be seen everywhere in the disaster area, and some hungry people who really can't stand it have set up "machete clubs" and other grain grabbing teams, under the banner of "the king is difficult to commit, and hunger is difficult to do", blocking the road and robbing grain everywhere.
Ragged refugees.
By 1878, the drought showed no signs of abating. Eastern Gansu, northern Sichuan, Henan, Shanxi, and Shandong regions have staged the tragedy of "cannibalism" one after another. The hungry people first sold their children and daughters, and then dug up the graves of the dead to eat, so that when someone in the family died, the living relatives and friends did not dare to weep, lest the remains of their relatives be remembered.
All kinds of human tragedies have brought Zeng Guoquan a powerful inner impact. Zeng Guoquan couldn't help but go to the imperial court again and again, asking the imperial court to reduce or delay the payment of military salaries, Beijing salaries and various money and food, and allocate funds for disaster relief to help the people in the disaster relief area.
When the disaster in Shanxi and other places reached Beijing, a fierce quarrel broke out between the officials of the DPRK and China.
The Westernists led by Li Hongzhang believed that the money of the imperial court should be used to develop the Westernization movement and opposed the misappropriation of money for other purposes.
However, the Qing faction led by Weng Tongyi held a completely opposite view, believing that it was necessary not only to provide immediate relief to the victims, but also to stop all Westernization movements, not to build railways, and not to run industries, so as not to offend the heavens, so that the famine could end as soon as possible.
Portrait of Li Hongzhang. The two factions insisted on their own words, argued with reason, and refused to give in to each other, forcing the Empress Dowager Cixi to neutralize the opinions of the two factions and introduce a compromise plan.
To put it simply, this plan is that the imperial court is shouting the slogan of disaster relief, and at the same time, it takes out a little money with a buckle and rope, which is symbolically used for disaster reliefAnd most of this money was spent in the disaster area close to Beijing, in order to preserve the dignity of the Qing Dynasty.
Shanxi, far from Beijing, has received very little relief money. Zeng Guoquan had no choice but to try to allocate local grain reserves for disaster relief.
However, what Zeng Guoquan didn't expect was that although all states and counties in Shanxi have set up granaries, they also have a complete management system. However, as the late Qing Dynasty became more and more decaying, the warehousing system became virtually non-existent, and the misappropriation and resale of grain appeared one after another, and the grain that seemed to be well stocked on the books had in fact been emptied by a group of officialdom moths.
Zhumen's wine and meat stink, and there are frozen bones on the road.
As a result, when it was time to use the grain reserves, these officialdom moths would not be able to hand over the grain at all, but the victims of the disaster cannot but be saved. In desperation, Zeng Guoquan had no choice but to blow up his lifelong love card, raise funds for disaster relief everywhere, and squeeze out a sum of funds from the local treasury in Shanxi, so he reluctantly set up a few sporadic porridge factories.
There are very few porridge factories, but there are many victims. Many of the victims were afraid that they would not be able to get food, so they waited day and night at the gate of the porridge factory to be served, and some of them were dying of hunger, and before they could get their own bowl of porridge, they died silently in this long wait.
Seeing that the victims everywhere could not be saved, Zeng Guoquan had no choice but to invent a magical food called "Hunger Relief Gu Dan". This food is made of black beans and hemp seeds, and it is said that eating one can not be hungry for three days, eating two can keep you away from hunger for seven or seven forty-nine days, and if you eat three, you can live without eating like a fairy.
Hungry homeless.
It is impossible to verify whether the miraculous "Hunger Bigu Dan" really has this miraculous effect, but the emergence of this kind of food itself reflects the seriousness of the food shortage, and the cause of the food shortageIn addition to the illegal theft of grain by officials, there are also opium cultivation on an excessively large scale, which affects food security.
Since the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty has suffered internal and external troubles, and the treasury has been empty. In order to increase taxes and fiscal revenues, the Qing Dynasty came up with the idea of encouraging the common people to grow opium, and hoped to compete with foreigners and realize the self-production and sale of domestic opium.
In the view of Li Hongzhang, an important minister, this scene is that "foreign medicine cannot be banned", so "the ban on foreign medicine should be resisted". For the common people, the profits of growing opium are much higher than that of growing grain, and the common people, under the inducement of profits, have used the fertile land to grow opium, resulting in a large decline in grain production.
The opium cultivation that quenched thirst by drinking water eventually turned into a sharp knife that pierced itself.
In the harvest year, the cultivation of opium not only allowed the common people to increase their income, but also allowed the imperial court to obtain taxes, which can be described as the best of both worlds. But in the disaster year, the disadvantages of opium cultivation became apparent. No matter how good the growth of opium is, after all, it cannot be eaten, and it also occupies a large amount of land and labor, which invisibly exacerbates the deterioration of the disaster. ”
Not only that, but because many people grow opium on their own, their health is affected, and they are even more powerless to resist famine. This made Zhang Zhidong, who succeeded as the governor of Shanxi, once said sadly: "Yuanqu (now Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province) produced the most cigarettes, and the most people died of starvation. ”
According to incomplete statistics, the "Ding Wu Strange Famine" caused a total of 1 people in Shandong, Shanxi, Zhili, Henan, Shaanxi and other places600 million to 200 million people, about half of the country's total population at that time, and about 13 million people died directly from famine and plagueOf the 16 million inhabitants of Shanxi province alone, 5 million died.
Thousands of miles of starvation, millions of displaced people.
Looking back on this tragic past a hundred years ago, while we cherish the memory of our ancestors, we should also be glad to live in a peaceful and great era. A large number of scientists represented by Grandpa Yuan Longping,Only by guarding our food security all our lives can hundreds of millions of people enjoy peace and happiness without fear of hunger and hardship.