Chapter 45 Section 5 Pan Jixun beams water to attack sand

Yuan died and Ming Xing.Due to the alternation of old and new dynasties, the Yellow River was once in disrepair.In the early Ming Dynasty, the river disaster became serious again. Many places such as eastern Henan, western Shandong, southern Hebei, and northern Jiangsu were flooded, and the Huitong River was repeatedly destroyed.Water transportation is of great significance to the capital's grain consumption and political stability, and ensuring transportation became a basic rule of river management in the Ming Dynasty. Starting from the preservation of transportation, in the early Ming Dynasty, the river was governed by the policy of blocking the north and dividing the south.Beidu means to build a long embankment on the north bank of the lower reaches of the Yellow River to prevent the Yellow River from breaking up and moving northward.Because the northern decision to move to the north will destroy the waterway leading to the river and cut off the north-south water transport.However, due to the southward movement and southward migration, the Yellow River can flow into the sea along the Sishui and Huai Rivers, which poses less threat to water transportation.The southern division means that the Yellow River diverges southward, along the old Jialu Road, Woshui, Yingshui, etc., and enters the Yellow Sea along the Huaihe River.They think that if the river is too powerful, if it is not vented smoothly, it will burst and flood.The river branch is weak, the water flow is unobstructed, and it is not easy to collapse.In the early Ming Dynasty, Xu Youzhen, Bai Ang, Liu Daxia, etc., the main officials who presided over river governance, all implemented this policy.Xu Youzhen also conducted an experiment to compare the drainage speed of a one-hole pot and a five-hole pot, and use the fact that the latter is faster than the former to prove that the flood drainage effect of the separate flow is better than that of the single flow.And thus won the emperor's support for this river control policy.

In the short term, building dikes in the north and diverting the flow in the south is indeed conducive to water conservation and flood drainage, and has achieved certain results.However, the problem of the Yellow River is not only a problem of flooding, which is a symptom; because the river is full of sand, it is a fundamental problem that the river is blocked by sediment.However, the flow rate of diversion must be slow, and the sediment is easy to settle; in the long run, the speed of raising the river bed must be accelerated, which will inevitably lead to more serious floods.In the late Ming Dynasty, this problem was fully exposed. The lower reaches of the Yellow River burst very frequently, and floods and sand damage were unprecedentedly serious.In this case, Pan Jixun and others developed a new river control method.

This new method of river control is called the method of beaming water and attacking sand by later generations.It was first proposed by an unknown scholar in Yucheng (east of Pinglu County, Shanxi). Wan Gong, the Prime Minister of Hedao, first tried it out, and Pan Jixun made it further perfected and widely promoted.They believe that the huge Yellow River has a high sediment content in the water, and it flows eastward with the water in a steady stream, and the manpower is limited, so it cannot be discharged.But the water power is infinite, if you concentrate it to attack the sand, it is like "using soup to fertilize the snow", and you can solve it easily.Pan Jixun presided over the management of the Yellow River for a long time. Focusing on sand attack by beaming water, he took a series of measures in the project, mainly in the following aspects.

(1) "Saipan decided to turn the tide".Yucheng Xiucai believes that "the water will be strong, the force will be sandy, and the sand will make the river deep."Pan Jixun fully agrees with this view.Therefore, when he was controlling the river, although he continued to implement the policy of blocking the north, he opposed allowing the river to diverge southward, and replaced it with the policy of "determining the side to stop the flow". "The front of the fortress is determined to stop the current", that is, to block the river water from the side of the breach, so that the river water can be concentrated into the main stream.Pan Jixun has presided over the river control work four times. It took him 20 years to block hundreds of Yellow River breaches, and finally ended the long-term diversion and flooding of the lower reaches of the Yellow River, concentrating the river water on the old course of Jialu.This project is not only convenient for water collection and sand attack, but more importantly, it immediately relieves the people in the yellow flood zone from the troubles of floods.

(2) Build near embankments to collect water to attack sand, and build remote embankments to prevent flooding.They believe that "build embankments to contain water, use water to attack sand, if the water does not overflow on both sides, it will hit the bottom of the river."Therefore, in addition to blocking the breach, the main force is to press against the waterfront and build strong embankments on both sides of the lower reaches of the Yellow River.The two north-south dikes are called near dikes or strand dikes, and they are the most important projects for beaming water and attacking sand.However, because the north and south dikes are too close to the water, even if they are built very firmly, in the event of a severe flood, the Yellow River will burst and overflow, causing floods.In order to take precautions, they built another distant embankment, also known as remote embankment, besides the north and south dikes.This double embankment of near and far is generally built in the lower reaches of the Yellow River (except for the river section close to Haikou), and some of the dangerous river sections are reinforced by moon dikes in addition to the near and far embankments.Later, in order to prevent the flood overflowing from the embankment from rushing along the two dikes, destroying the dikes on the left and right; in order to allow the sediment to be deposited between the two dikes to strengthen the embankment and return the clear water to the big river, In order to strengthen the force of attacking sand, a lattice dike was built between the two dikes to retain water.In addition, an overflow dam was built on the causeway for controlled flood discharge.Pan's embankment project is relatively complete and has played a certain role in sand attack and flood control (Figure 16).

(3) Store clean and brush muddy.The Yellow River and the Huaihe River meet at Qingkou (now southwest of Qingjiang City, Jiangsu Province), and the Yellow River and Huaihe River join together.The Huaihe River has less sediment and clear water. In order to strengthen the force of flushing sand, Pan raised and thickened the Gaojiayan embankment to store the Huaihe water in Hongze Lake and raise the water level of Hongze Lake so that clean water can flow into the river smoothly. , With the power of clear water, wash away the turbid yellow water.It is believed that the river below the Qingkou will be smoother.The effect of this project is not great, because the Huaihe River has less water than the Yellow River, and it is difficult for clean water to enter the river smoothly. The Gaojiayan embankment is too high and the land is flooded, which will also pose a serious threat to the Huainan area.

Pan's river control, which focused on sand attack by beaming water, has achieved a lot in general. He has controlled the floods in the lower reaches of the Yellow River since the early Ming Dynasty, slowing down the speed of sediment deposition in the Yellow River, and preventing the Yellow River from bursting and flooding. The frequency decreases.However, the situation of the Yellow River is very complicated, and it is not possible to rely solely on collecting water to attack sand. River control must proceed from the overall situation, adapt measures to local conditions, and adopt various methods to achieve more significant results.What's more, the water volume of the Yellow River is extremely variable, with great fluctuations. It is almost impossible to build a levee with just the right width, which can restrain water and attack sand without flooding.As time went by, the lower reaches of the Yellow River later became an aboveground river.