Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 978 0973 [Hebei Miscellaneous Notes]

The emperor's envoys, carrying imperial edicts and rewards, traveled from Luoyang to different provincial capitals, prefectures and counties.

If the troops were stationed too far away, there would be too much money for rewards to be transported from the capital. In this case, they would take Ming Baochao with them and exchange part of it for silver or copper coins at the Baoquan Bureau, which was closest to the station.

Senior generals were rewarded with Ming Dynasty treasure notes, middle and low-level generals were rewarded with silver dollars, and ordinary soldiers were rewarded with copper coins.

As domestic and foreign trade became increasingly prosperous, the issuance of Ming Baochao went very smoothly.

There are already four denominations of 500 strings of coins, 200 strings of coins, 100 strings of coins, and 50 strings of coins. They are mainly used for trading bulk commodities, and merchants can also use them to pay taxes at the government office.

Ordinary people basically don't use this because the denomination is too large and the entire property of many people is less than 50 strings of cash.

Zhu Ming was very cautious about rewarding Yue Fei, and even carefully selected the person who delivered the imperial edict - Zong Ze's nephew Zong Wu.

It is impossible that Zongwu came all the way here just to reward Yue Fei.

He first stopped in Kaifeng, and took the official document from the Ministry of War to obtain the command of a team of grain transport troops. Then he took the official document from the Ministry of Revenue and led the grain transport troops to the Kaifeng warehouse to collect supplies, and then drove carts of money and goods to reward the Kaifeng Imperial Army soldiers.

Even those imperial guards who were ordered to stay in Kaifeng and did not go to fight against Western Xia received a symbolic amount of several hundred coins.

Zhu Ming was not afraid of his soldiers squandering their money, as it would boost the local economy and speed up the circulation of money. All drought-stricken areas were urgently mobilizing grain for relief, so even if grain prices rose, they could still be basically controlled.

The monetary problem in ancient China was never inflation, but rather that everyone hid their money, resulting in a shortage of currency in the market!

After the rewards were given in Kaifeng, Zongwu went to Daming Prefecture.

The Yellow River diversion project was officially completed last year. Learning from the lessons of the Northern Song Dynasty's management of the Yellow River, the Ming Dynasty took several years to divert the river.

Today, the main channel of the Yellow River flows through the southern suburbs of Daming Prefecture, passing through Qingping, Gaotang, Pingyuan, Dezhou, Deping, Leling, Wudi, and finally flows into the sea at the junction of Wudi County and Haixing County in later generations.

In order to dredge the river and build dams, the capital of Dezhou was moved fifteen miles north.

Except for Gaotang County, the other five county towns along the way were all relocated, and the shortest one was moved to a place ten miles away and rebuilt.

Kaide Prefecture (Puyang) and Daming Prefecture are key areas for the management of the Yellow River, with large dikes covering small dikes and large dams covering small dams.

In Zhao Village, northwest of Puyang, all the villagers moved away and built several additional dikes. On the other side of Shanghusha, an artificial river was dug to divert the water. This artificial river is about 200 miles long and directly connects the Yellow River and Liangshan Lake.

The artificial river has dams and sluices. Normally, some of the sluices are opened for navigation, all of them are opened to discharge flood water during flood season, and the sluices are closed to dredge the artificial river during dry season.

Liangshan Lake has returned tens of thousands of acres of farmland to the lake. It is also forbidden to build farmland around the lake. If violated, the punishment is the same as arson.

All the ancient towns in Damingfu were relocated, and a large lake with a radius of more than ten miles was dug to discharge flood water. The terrain there is slightly higher, and water is stored during the flood season and released during the dry season. Several levels of dams were built around the lake to store water and flush the river downstream.

From Kaide Prefecture all the way to the estuary, the Yellow River is regularly diverted and silted, which not only raises the terrain on both sides of the river, but also releases silt in the river water and irrigates nearby farmland.

After this series of projects are completed, as long as the Yellow River is properly maintained, there will be no major problems for the next one or two hundred years.

But if it was in the middle and late stages of the dynasty, the administration gradually deteriorated, daily maintenance was poor, and the riverbed had been rising for many years, the Yellow River would probably change course when encountering a major flood!
That kind of situation is not something Zhu Ming should consider. It is enough for him to control the Yellow River for one or two hundred years.

As the Yellow River floods were under control, the Daming Prefecture that Zong Wu saw at this time became more prosperous. Merchants from Hebei and northern Shandong kept stopping in Daming Prefecture to unload goods, and countless merchants transported goods to Kaifeng and Luoyang.

The prefect is organizing the people to build more city walls!

During the more than ten years of Ming Dynasty rule, the population here flourished and grew, with more and more people living in the surrounding areas. The permanent population exceeded 300,000, and the original city walls were no longer sufficient.

Xie Shen, a general of the Caojun Army who was called in to help, lamented during a casual chat with Zong Wu: "My ancestral home is in Daming Prefecture. More than 20 years ago, the Yellow River burst its banks and flooded the prefecture, drowning countless people. My family left our hometown at that time. When I was a child, my grandfather told me that when he was a few years old, the Yellow River changed its course, from the south to the north of Daming Prefecture... Alas! Daming Prefecture was the Beijing of the former Song Dynasty, but it was flooded back and forth. Just as the population was recovering, a flood drowned countless people again."

Zong Wu said: "The current Holy Emperor is a man of great talent and strategy. The Yellow River flood has been brought under control. Daming Prefecture can now be stable."

"He is indeed a man of great talent and vision." Xie Shen nodded.

He was a general of the grain transport army, often escorting goods around, and knew how the Ming Dynasty managed the Yellow River.

Not to mention other complex projects, just moving a state capital and five county towns was impossible for the former Song Dynasty. Any minister who dared to do this when managing the river would be criticized and resigned on the spot. Even if the former Song Dynasty monarchs and ministers wanted to do this, there would be many local obstacles in the specific implementation.

How could they be like Zhu Guoxiang and Zhu Ming, father and son, who had to unconditionally execute the emperor's orders?

Zong Wu looked at the prosperous city of Daming and sighed with emotion. He then took the Ming treasure notes to exchange for money and rewarded the local soldiers who participated in the expedition against Western Xia.

This place is different from Kaifeng.

The warehouses outside Kaifeng belonged to the national treasury, and the Ministry of Revenue could transfer supplies with a single document. Damingfu belonged to the local treasury, and the Ministry of Revenue could certainly call on it, but the procedures were relatively complicated, so it would be better to directly exchange the Daming treasure notes for money.

After the reward in Daming Prefecture, Zong Wu's only task was to go to Yue Fei - the army east of Kaifeng, when conquering Xia, only the garrison in Daming Prefecture was mobilized at most. Moreover, the garrison in Daming Prefecture was large in number, and its main task was to fight floods and rescue people, so all of them had to be mobilized once a flood occurred.

Zongwu took a boat all the way to Baoding Prefecture and exchanged most of his banknotes for silver dollars and copper coins.

There was no Baoquan Bureau further north, so they could only exchange money here and then transport it to the grassland. Even the grain transport troops in Baoding Prefecture were not many and were busy transporting relief grain to Kaifeng. Zongwu asked the prefect to help gather a team of civilians.

"It turns out that the angel is Mr. Zong's nephew. I am so sorry for my disrespect!" Prefect Zheng Pu received him warmly.

Zong Wu bowed in return: "My great uncle left a last wish before his death, that his descendants have a chance to visit Hebei again. I have come all the way here and found that Hebei is as rich as Henan. If my great uncle knew this, he would be pleased."

Zheng Pu smiled and said, "Hebei was in ruins before because of the confrontation with the Liao Kingdom. Even if there was no war, the taxes were heavy. Now that the Liao Kingdom has been destroyed, there is no longer a large army stationed there that wastes money and food. All the abandoned water conservancy projects have been repaired, and many new irrigation canals have been dug. How can the province not be prosperous with light taxes and levies? In Baoding Prefecture alone, the grain taxes sent to the court in recent years have reached hundreds of thousands of dan, and there is still surplus grain in the Changping warehouse. This year, I heard that there was a severe drought in the northwest. After the summer harvest, in addition to the grain taxes that should be handed in, Baoding Prefecture also transported an additional 30,000 dan of wheat to Kaifeng."

Zong Wu exclaimed: "In addition to the regular taxes, you can also add the luck. Zheng Taishou has made outstanding achievements in government. He will definitely be promoted next year."

Zheng Pu stroked his beard and smiled, humbly waving his hand: "This is the duty of a minister, reporting to the holy monarch and bringing peace to the people."

Zheng Pu also wanted to hold a literary gathering, invite scholars, and go sightseeing with Zongwu.

Zong Wu politely declined, saying that he had an imperial mission to complete and it would not be too late to deal with these things when he returned.

He continued northward with the civilians, escorting money and property, crossed the Juma River and arrived at the former territory of the Liao Kingdom.

It was said that this place was destroyed by the Jin Kingdom. When it was first recovered, there was no one living for thousands of miles, and only farmers were farming around the towns. Zong Wu found many new villages. When he asked, he found out that they were moved from the south. The Yellow River Project relocated many villages and towns, half of which were moved to the north of the Juma River.

There are also villages where Han and non-Han people live together, grazing and farming at the same time.

Although the Xi, Khitan, Bohai, and Jurchen peoples all learned to speak Chinese and had to keep their hair in a bun like Han people, they still retained some foreign customs.

Zongwu rested in a village, and the village elder who was responsible for entertaining him was a Khitan.

Although he is called the village elder, he is actually less than fifty years old.

The age structure here is very distorted. The successive famines and wars during the Liao and Jin dynasties caused almost all the elderly people of all ethnic groups to die.

The Khitan village elder said to Zongwu, "Less and fewer people are grazing, and more and more are planting crops. Look at the land outside the village. A few years ago, half of it was used for grazing, but now it's all been planted with beans. I advised the agricultural officials to plant beans in the first few years to increase fertility, and after three to five years, we can plant wheat."

Zong Wu originally had a deep prejudice against the Khitans, but the village before him had already been half-Sinicized and there was not much difference between them and the Han people.

"There are more children in the village than adults." Zong Wu described what he saw.

The Khitan village elder laughed and said, "There is no tax for three years, and the tax is halved for two years. Every household has surplus grain, and life is better than in Liao and Jin. The government also encourages us to have children. If you have a child, you will be exempted from the grain tax of three mu of land for one year. There will be rewards for the child to be registered as an adult."

Zong Wu asked again: "Are all ethnic groups intermarrying?"

The Khitan village elder nodded and said, "The government does not allow marriages within the same ethnic group. Khitans can marry Xi people, and they can marry Han people, but they cannot marry each other. Men of all ethnic groups like to marry Han women. They are very capable when they are brought home. They can pick mulberry leaves, raise silkworms, weave cloth, and help with farm work. Unfortunately, there are not many Han women. When a young girl reaches adulthood, the door will be trampled by the people who come to propose marriage."

"Then they will all become treasures." Zong Wu said with a smile.

The Khitan village elder said, "Isn't she a treasure? My youngest daughter-in-law is a Han girl. She is very good at raising silkworms and spinning beautiful yarn. I never let her do heavy work. I let my second daughter-in-law from the Xi tribe do the dishes and cooking. This Han girl is different. I asked my eldest grandson to learn farming, but she asked me to study, saying that he could pass the imperial examination and become a husband in the future."

Zong Wu was surprised and asked, "There is a village school here?"

The Khitan village elder explained: "There is a village school in the next village, it's only seven or eight miles away. In the past, there were wolves when it was barren, but we worked together to kill them all. The children are not afraid to go to school by themselves."

After chatting for two hours, Zongwu had lunch with the village elders.

He found that the civilians living here were more relaxed and comfortable than in many places in the south.

Every household has its own land, but must cultivate it themselves because there are no tenants.

The disadvantage is that there is a shortage of daily necessities, and it takes a long way to buy salt and vinegar. Occasionally, a peddler would come to the countryside and would become the focus and be warmly received by the villagers.

The government even turned a blind eye to illegal salt dealers.

It didn't take several generations at all. Due to the intermingling of Han and non-Han peoples and the prohibition of intermarriage among the same ethnic group, the first generation of non-Han peoples began to automatically assimilate into Han culture.

(End of this chapter)