Chapter 31 Section 8: The Farce on the Post Post Road

The history of postal stations in the Tang Dynasty is the epitome of the entire history of the Tang Dynasty.The prosperity of the post office reflects the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, while the extravagance and decay of the rulers of the Tang Dynasty and the chaos of the later political situation are also reflected in the post office department.The following incidents that happened on the post post road and in the post house in the Tang Dynasty are clear evidence. In the mid-Tang Dynasty, the eunuchs became more and more powerful. Some eunuchs even ignored the emperor, and even showed great disrespect to the court ministers.During Tang Xianzong's reign, the poet Yuan Zhen served as the censor.When he returned to Beijing from other places, he lived in Shishui post on the way.It happened that the eunuch Liu Shiyuan also rushed here.The two sides competed for the living room in the post.Liu Shiyuan got angry, opened the door and broke into Yuan Zhen's bedroom. Yuan Zhen was so anxious that he didn't have time to put on his shoes and ran outside.Liu Shiyuan chased after him and injured Yuan Zhen's face with a mallet.This incident was brought to the emperor's side, but the emperor still favored the eunuchs.

There are too many things that the rulers of the Tang Dynasty used the post to enjoy pleasure and domineeringly.Shi Siming, one of the leaders of the Anshi Rebellion, once used Luoyang's postal express horse to send fresh cherries to his son Shi Chaoyi in Hebei.During Tang Xianzong's reign, the royal family liked to eat cockles from the south. Every year, tens of thousands of "posts" were used to transport fresh cockles from Mingzhou (now Ningbo, Zhejiang) to Chang'an in time, and the common people were exhausted.The most famous postal transport in history is the story of "a ride on a red dust concubine laughing". "Hongchen" refers to the dust in the busy market, and it describes the fast horse riding through many big cities all the way, and the "concubine" is Yang Guifei.It is about the extravagance of the palace during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty.It is said that Concubine Yang loves to eat fresh lychees, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty always sends her special personnel to deliver this fruit from Fuzhou, Sichuan, where it is produced every year.It is thousands of miles away from Fuzhou to Chang'an. After the long-distance transmission by fast horses on the post road, it is really not easy to ask the lychee flavor to remain unchanged when it arrives in the capital. Many people will be exhausted to death on the way.This fact once aroused the infinite anger of the upright people at that time, and many poets took it as the theme of their poems, using the past to satirize the present.A poem by Du Fu said: "Recalling the envoys from the South China Sea in the past, galloping to offer lychees, hundreds of horses dying in the valley, and now the elders are sad." A poem by Du Mu, a poet in the late Tang Dynasty, wrote: "Looking back at Chang'an, there are piles of embroidery, and the top of the mountain Thousands of gates are opened for the first time. A concubine who rides the world of mortals laughs, and no one knows that it is a lychee" ("Three Quatrains from Huaqing Palace").In the first poem, Du Fu used the historical facts of the Han Dynasty to satirize people today, lamenting that in order to eat lychees, people and horses were exhausted and died tragically in the valley.The second poem Du Mu said is: Along the way, the wind and dust are rolling, and the post-horse is galloping. People who don’t know think that there is an urgent military situation, but no one knows that it’s just to spoil the concubine and want to eat fresh lychees. The king uses this to win the beauty smile.This is a good article to criticize current politics, severely criticizing the extravagant and wasteful behavior of feudal emperors who disregarded the life and death of the people.

Due to the political chaos in the late Tang Dynasty, the post houses became more and more depressed, and some of the original luxurious post houses were deserted.Some post stations in remote areas even closed down.During Tang Xianzong's reign, Li Bo served as the envoy of Zelu Jiedu.After returning to the court, he reported to the emperor the destruction of the post roads he saw along the way: "If the roads are not repaired, the post horses will die."Zelu is in the southeast of today's Shanxi, not far from Chang'an, the capital of Kyoto. Tang Xianzong was shocked after looking at the list.The example of Baocheng Station mentioned above is of course even more shocking.In addition, since the Anshi Rebellion, post roads and post stations in some areas of Sichuan have been desolate, as reflected in the poems of poets Du Fu and Jia Dao.When Du Fu traveled to Zizhou (now Santai, Sichuan), he saw that the post house had become a deserted house next to the spring.Jia Dao walked with his stick (juju) in the mountains, but he couldn't find where the Zizhou post was: "Ce Zhang rode up the mountain post, and asked everyone in Zizhou".These poems are a portrayal of the ruined political situation of the Tang Dynasty.