Chapter 88 Section 41 "Sichuan has land but no people"

In the sixth year of Kangxi (AD 1667), Sichuan governor Zhang Dedi came to Sichuan and reported to the emperor that he was just an empty governor, because no one needed him to manage, "Sichuan has land but no people."In the tenth year of Kangxi (AD 1671), Cai Yurong, governor of Huguang, said: "There are farmlands in Shu Province, but no people who farm them" ("Records of Emperor Ren, the Holy Zuren of the Qing Dynasty"). In the 22nd year of Kangxi (AD 1683), He Yuanjun, the magistrate of Mahu (now Pingshan, Sichuan), also said: "Shu is sparsely populated." In the twenty-fourth year of Kangxi (AD 1685), the population gradually increased, but the province only had 18,009 Ding, or more than 90,000 people. The people in the li are less than the people in a county in other provinces" ("Sichuan Tongzhi" Volume 71).

Of course, there are still people who have not been counted.For example, there are quite a few white-haired men and white-haired women: "There are some people in Xuzhou who escaped from the bandits and fled into the deep mountains. They have been clothed with grass and wood for a long time, and they are no different from elk. Later, when they saw the officers and soldiers, they thought the bandits had come back, and they walked up the mountain in shock. They walked like flying, and the pursuers couldn't catch them. You Maoyun." "The two savages in Nanjiang are good at handling ferocious beasts, breaking their hands to eat roe deer, and jumping up cliffs like falcons. They are not afraid of ferocious beasts, but people. Although family relatives call them, they run away quickly and ignore them."

These "primitives" returning to their ancestors are not afraid of wolves, insects, tigers and leopards, but what they are most afraid of is the two-legged kind. Sichuan at that time was no longer like a scene on earth.After witnessing it, the officials at that time wrote in a letter: "Since entering Sichuan, I have seen thorns clogged the road and smoke has disappeared for thousands of miles. In the wilderness, there are only wild beasts in groups, and there are no traces of people. Occasionally, I saw one or two surviving humans. They are also people with incomplete facial features, ears and noses cut off, hands and feet missing, and they look like ghosts and ghosts, making people feel that they are not walking in the world."

To this day, whenever the urban area of ​​Chengdu is being renovated, roads are dug and canals are dug, the bones of the dead are often exposed, and they speak out about what happened at that time. The disaster in Sichuan at the end of Ming Dynasty was enough to make people horrified, and they couldn't bear to read it. But if you look up the history again, you will find that this is nothing more than a rare occurrence.This is not the first time such a large-scale disaster has occurred in Sichuan, and it was the same at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.Sichuan was one of the main battlefields in the Yuan Dynasty. After the war, the population dropped sharply from 2.59 million households in the Song Dynasty to 120,000 households.Later, Zhu Yuanzhang emigrated vigorously, which gradually restored the population of Sichuan.