Chapter 46 Section 6 Jin Fu and Chen Huang Zhihe

All water conservancy facilities must be diligently maintained.The Yellow River is sandy, and the water conservancy facilities here are even more so.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, due to the change of dynasties, the embankments of the Yellow River fell into disrepair, and the flood and sand disasters were very serious.According to statistics, from the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in the first year of Shunzhi (AD 1644) to the fifteenth year of Kangxi (AD 1676), among the 33 years, there were 23 serious breaches; Floods in other places flowed across the river, and the north-south water transport was repeatedly interrupted.In the 16th year of Kangxi, although Wu Sangui and other "San Francisco rebellions" had not yet been finally put down, the Qing government appointed Jin Fu as the governor of the river to preside over the management of the Yellow River and the canal.

Chen Huang is Jin Fu's staff, usually attaches great importance to investigation and research, and is knowledgeable.In terms of river control, although he, like his predecessors, advocated that "dikes must be the first priority" and emphasized the role of embankment building, but he also insisted on diversification of river control methods, thinking that measures must be adapted to local conditions, and said "either dredging, or accumulating , or restrain, or release, or divide, or combine, and all are naturally appropriate."Later, he even proposed that preventing the sediment from descending is the foundation of river governance.Germination of future generations to maintain the idea of ​​soil and water.Although this idea was not paid attention to by people at that time, his other ideas on river governance were adopted by Jin Fu in the practice of river governance.

Jin Fu and Chen Huang used the same main measures as Pan Jixun to control the river, that is, building embankments to collect water and attack sand with water.However, the scope of dike building is wider than that of Pan's. In addition to repairing Pan's old dike, it is also built in the river section that Pan has never built.For example, in Henan, they believe that "Henan is in the upper reaches, and if there is a loss in Henan, then the rivers in the south of the Yangtze River (the original text is the south character, which should be the mistake of the north word) are silted up."Therefore, in Xingyang, Yifeng, Kaocheng (Yi and Kao have been merged into Lankao) and other places in the central and eastern part of Henan, the two dikes of Li and Yao were built.Another example is in the east of Yuntiguan (now the county seat of Binhai County) in northern Jiangsu. Pan thought it was close to the Yellow Sea and disdained to build river embankments.However, Jin and Chen believed that "those who govern the river must first start from the downstream, and if the downstream is dredged, the upstream will not be full."Therefore, 18,000 feet of river embankments with beams of water to attack sand were also built.

But Jin and Chen Zhihe surpassed Pan in many respects, apart from the above-mentioned similarities and differences with Pan.Pan only emphasized building embankments to restrain water and attack sand with water, while Jin and Chen not only emphasized embankment and sand attack, but also attached great importance to the dredging role of manpower.He believes that the new silt less than three years old is relatively loose and easy to be washed away by the river, while the old silt older than five years has hardened and must be dredged by manpower.They not only paid attention to manual dredging, but also summed up a set of digging methods in the shape of "Chuan".The method is to open a deep ditch with a width of eight feet on each side of the waterway on the old river bed at three feet before the breach is blocked, and add the waterway to form a "Chuan" shape.After the breach is blocked and the current is reversed, the three waterways can quickly wash away the undug sand in the middle. The "Chuan"-shaped excavation method can reduce the workload of excavation, and the excavated sand can be used to reinforce the embankment.When dredging the estuary, they also created a sand brushing machine that works with water, and tied an iron broom to the stern. When the boat drove back and forth, it could turn up the sediment at the bottom of the river, and then use the momentum of the flowing water to send the sediment to the deep sea. middle.This is the beginning of my country's use of machinery to control rivers.

After 10 years of unremitting efforts, Jin, Chen and others have achieved more achievements than their predecessors in blocking breaches, dredging rivers, and building embankments.Taking embankment construction as an example, more than 1,000 miles have been built in total.This not only ensured the smooth flow of the North-South Canal, but also created conditions for the recovery of eastern Henan, western Shandong, southern Hebei, and northern Jiangsu (Figure 17). Although Jin Fu, Chen Huang and others made great achievements in river control, they were soon framed by bad guys and treated unfairly.After they basically calmed the river, some land in the lower reaches of the Yellow River that could not be cultivated due to flooding could be cultivated.Some tyrants with political backgrounds took advantage of their power to occupy these lands one after another.Jin and Chen stopped them and used the land to raise people for reclamation.It is believed that by doing so, firstly, refugees can be resettled, and secondly, funds for river control can be increased.As a result, they were falsely accused by the tyrants, who falsely accused them of "robbing the people's fields and falsely calling them reclamation".As a result, Jin Fu was dismissed from office and Chen Huang was imprisoned.

In order to develop the lower reaches of the Yellow River and for the safety of people's life and property in this area, the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties also fought tenaciously against the water and sand disasters of the Yellow River for thousands of years.They have made many achievements, providing the most necessary guarantee for the economic, political and cultural prosperity of this region.However, the root cause of the flood and sediment disaster in the lower reaches of the Yellow River is not in the lower reaches itself, but in the middle and upper reaches, especially the middle reaches.However, the ancients lacked understanding of this issue, or did not understand it deeply, and put all their strength downstream.They only know how to build embankments and dredge rivers, but they don't know how to treat the root cause and control the soil erosion in the middle reaches, so they are very limited.Only through overall planning and comprehensive management, focusing on the middle reaches, and also the upstream and downstream; focusing on water and soil conservation, and building reservoirs, embankments, and dredging rivers, can better results be achieved.