Zhao Jun spent the New Year of the eleventh year of the Qingli period in Shaanxi. After entering Guanzhong from Sichuan, he went to Chang'an first.
As it happened to be New Year's Day, he simply spent the New Year in Chang'an.
Compared with the prosperity of Kaifeng Prefecture and Bianliang City, Chang'an, even though it was once the capital of the Tang Empire, also gives people a feeling of desolation.
In addition to the towering ancient city walls with countless mottled traces of time remaining on them, they still tell the world about its former prosperity.
The rest of the place can only be described as horrific.
The palace was burned down, and the houses of the people in the city were dilapidated and old. Many local people's homes could not be said to be bare, but they could be considered poor.
After all, as the capital of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an once assumed political, economic, military and other responsibilities, and prospered because of this.
But after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Chang'an and Luoyang were almost deserted. Historical records show that "in the two capitals, six or seven out of ten palaces, houses, markets and neighborhoods were burned down", which shows the great impact of the war.
By the beginning of the Song Dynasty, nine out of ten houses in the two capitals were deserted. The huge cities were empty but no one lived there.
In addition, the Guanzhong region had experienced hundreds of years of turmoil from several major dynasties, including the Qin and Han dynasties and the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The ecological environment had already been severely damaged, and naturally it could not assume the responsibility of being the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty.
For this reason, Zhao Kuang had no choice but to continue to establish his capital in Kaifeng, the capital of the Later Zhou Dynasty, instead of moving the capital to other places.
Now, after decades of development, the ecological environment of Guanzhong has recovered a little, and the population has slowly grown. Naturally, the people need a big city to undertake Guanzhong's commercial activities.
However, the business situation in Chang'an City is still very poor. Except for a few stalls in the East Market, the rest of the place is either a dilapidated residential area or even a wasteland.
You have to know that this is inside Chang'an City. If there was wasteland in Kaifeng City, countless people would have rushed over to occupy it. How could they let it be left empty?
From here you can see how dilapidated Chang'an is now.
Seeing this situation, Zhao Jun wanted to use the same trick again and plan the construction of Chang'an City, just like the planning of Beiping City, recruiting people into the city to build houses, thereby promoting urban development.
But when Fan Xiang handed him the data statistics of Guanzhong, he knew that this trick was not working.
This tactic can be used in Youzhou Prefecture because Youzhou, as the Nanjing of the Liao Dynasty, has the largest population, reaching over one million, close to two million, most of whom are Han people.
In the Battle of Xijin, Fan Zhongyan only repelled the Liao people, and the city of Beiping was only damaged by the war. The Han people's base in the entire Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun was not damaged.
Guanzhong is different.
Soil erosion, natural disasters and man-made disasters, frequent wars during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and the problem of food shortage continued. Sima Guang once said, "There is famine in Guanzhong, nine out of ten houses are empty, and displaced people are everywhere on the roads."
During the Tang Dynasty, the registered population in Guanzhong exceeded 3.19 million. Including the unregistered unregistered residents, the number was at least tens of thousands.
By the Northern Song Dynasty, the population of Guanzhong had dropped to 530,000, and the registered population of the thirty states in the entire Shaanxi Road was only 2.9 million. This shows how bad the situation in Guanzhong was due to the dual factors of war and ecological environment destruction.
The only good news is that in recent years the imperial court has been working on population restoration and ecological environment governance. Through the efforts of the past few years, both the population and the number of fields have increased.
However, the current population size is still unable to support the construction of Chang'an City. Unless people are recruited from the Central Plains, there will inevitably be a labor shortage.
It will also affect the farming and water conservancy construction in Guanzhong.
For this reason, Zhao Jun had to temporarily postpone this plan and focus on restoring the ecological environment in Guanzhong.
As long as the forest and grassland areas are cultivated, soil and water loss is prevented, and the land can be cultivated for farming, the population will naturally increase slowly.
"It's still due to insufficient population."
When Zhao Jun left Shaanxi Road in the eleventh year of the Qingli period, he put away the paper and pen he was using for recording and sighed.
He has recorded too many problems that need to be solved in the past two years.
But things have different urgency and importance. Some things can be done right away, while others are long-term plans and cannot be rushed.
So we still have to take it step by step.
The disadvantage of Guanzhong is that its ecological environment has not yet recovered and cannot support such a large population. Only by managing the ecological environment well can the problem of Guanzhong's decline be solved.
But there is another way, which is to repair the road and run the train as soon as possible.
Due to the poor ecological environment in Guanzhong, frequent droughts and serious food crises, the population has not been able to increase.
For example, "Zizhi Tongjian" records that in the third year of Jinglong reign of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang Dynasty, "there was famine in Guanzhong, and a dou of rice cost one hundred coins. The cattle died when transporting grain from Shandong, Jiang and Huai to the capital." This shows how serious the food shortage problem in Guanzhong was.
But if the roads are repaired and there are trains and canals to deliver grain to Guanzhong, then the food problem can be solved, and people can be directly transferred from the inland to Guanzhong.
This situation was very common in ancient times. The most famous example was the migration of people from Huguang to Sichuan. With so many people, many things could naturally be done quickly.
In January of the eleventh year of the Qingli period, after the Chinese New Year, Zhao Jun traveled north from Guanzhong to Yan'an Prefecture to continue inspecting local environmental issues.
His original plan was to inspect Yongxingjun Road, then go to Qinfeng Road, including Lanzhou, Qingtang and other places, and finally go north to Yinchuan and go to Ningxia to see the current situation in the northwest.
As a result, he was still halfway there, not even reaching Qinfeng Road, when he heard the news of Zhang Shixun's death in early February.
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