News from the Yellow River likewise caused everyone in Han Chang'an to grow solemn.
After all, if one were to seriously summarize the achievements of the Great Han, the unity of the entire realm in governing the Yellow River's floods would absolutely count as one of them.
Fa Zheng, who hailed from the Three Qins region, was especially familiar with this matter:
"In the third year of Yuanguang, the Yellow River burst its banks at the Huzi Dike in Puyang. Floodwaters poured into Juye Marsh and connected with the Huai and Si rivers, inundating sixteen commanderies. His Majesty ordered Ji An and Zheng Dang to lead a hundred thousand men to block the breach, but they failed."
As he spoke, Kongming also recalled the matter. When he did, his tone was filled with emotion:
"The year before the Huzi Dike collapsed, the plot at Mayi ended in disastrous failure. The Xiongnu invaded the north repeatedly. Emperor Xiao Wu rejected proposals for heqin, and the Marquis of Changping and the Marquis Champion, favored by imperial grace, led repeated expeditions beyond the passes, striking deep into the northern desert, shattering the Xiongnu, leaving no royal court south of the Gobi. Thus the north was pacified."
This was a stretch of history that all Han people now remembered with reflection. Emperor Xiao Wu had likewise faced a situation that could be called both internal and external calamities, and in the end resolutely rejected heqin in pursuit of achievements that would last a hundred generations.
Against the backdrop of launching the great Han–Xiongnu war, Ji An, Zheng Dang, and others leading a hundred thousand men to block the river breach already represented the full extent of the manpower the court could spare at the time.
Externally, the Han faced the Xiongnu, driving them far into the northern deserts with the might of the Marquis of Changping and the Marquis Champion, sealing Mount Langju.
Internally, however, when confronting the Yellow River's flooding, the result was a complete and utter failure.
The next decisive struggle between the Han court and the Yellow River would have to wait another twenty-three years. Liu Bei was well aware of this:
"In the second year of Yuanfeng, Emperor Xiao Wu mobilized tens of thousands to repair the Huzi Dike, ordering all officials from generals downward to participate in blocking the breach, and personally went to the Huzi Dike."
"After success was achieved, he composed the 'Song of Huzi' and built the Xuānfang Palace in mourning."
Civil and military officials alike participated in blocking the breach. Even the Yulin Guard, the emperor's own elite bodyguard, was mobilized. Among the civil and military nobility, the death toll reached into the hundreds.
This too was a period that today's Han people all remembered with reflection. Liu Bei did not deny that the Jing'an Shrine he later established after discussions with Kongming had drawn inspiration from this ancestor's example.
As for what followed…
Three years later, the Marquis of Changping passed away. Li Ling and Li Guangli both surrendered to the Xiongnu. After setbacks in war, the exhausted populace could no longer endure. Two million refugees flooded Guanzhong. The realm was drained to emptiness. People once again resorted to cannibalism. Ten years later, Emperor Xiao Wu issued the Luntai Edict, taking blame upon himself…
"Emperor Xiao Wu's policy of exploiting resources and opening the frontiers began with the breach of the Huzi Dike and ended with the blocking of the Huzi Dike."
Liu Bei sighed deeply. At this moment, his complex feelings toward the Yellow River were beyond words.
For aside from Emperor Xiao Wu, the present dynasty too had once battled this river.
When Wang Mang rebelled, the Yellow River burst at Yuancheng in Wei Commandery. Several commanderies east of Heqing suffered disaster, yet Wang Mang ignored it entirely, allowing the flood's devastation to linger for more than sixty years.
Not until the reign of Emperor Xiao Ming, when the Censor Wang Jing successfully governed the waters, did the Yellow River finally stabilize. Since then, nearly two hundred years had passed without a major breach, allowing today's Han people to live free of Yellow River disasters.
In the end, Pang Tong attempted to summarize:
"If the Yellow River runs smoothly, will the realm be at peace?"
Kongming neither affirmed nor denied this. He merely stared at the map, lost in thought.
Later generations praised the Tang dynasty for benefiting from favorable climate conditions and abundant resources. Because of this, they failed to recognize the importance of vegetation, leading to unrestrained land reclamation.
These same problems existed in the Great Han as well. It was just that, with the current population being smaller and the climate comparatively colder, they had not yet become obvious.
On his notebook, Kongming wrote the two characters "coal briquettes". It seemed this item was far more important than he had originally imagined.
At the same time, he also wrote "Yellow River model":
Could a model be used to demonstrate the disasters of the Yellow River after soil erosion?
After all, the concept of a "suspended river" alone was terrifying enough. If such a river were truly to breach its banks, the devastation would likely be nearly unprecedented in ancient times.
[Lightscreen]
[Another fairly famous issue in early Tang history was the frequent occurrence of natural disasters. This is extremely well known.
After all, whenever people talk about anecdotes surrounding Second Feng, one point that cannot be avoided is him swallowing locusts alive.
At the time, Guanzhong first suffered a drought, which then triggered a locust plague as a combo attack. Second Feng, already frantic from the drought, was in the fields with the common people digging canals to divert water for irrigation when he saw locusts blotting out the sky. His heart must have sunk completely. In his fury, grabbing a locust and chewing it alive is quite understandable.
After all, that was only the second year of Zhenguan. Li family's second son was under immense pressure.
Beyond that, the natural disasters of early Tang are simply too numerous to count. Taking the Zhenguan era as an example:
After the drought and locust combo of the second year, the third year brought a four-disaster set of drought, flood, locusts, and frost. The fourth year was much the same, with drought, flood, locusts, and hail.
The fifth and sixth years were rare periods of peace, after which pressure was piled back onto Second Feng without mercy.
In the seventh year, there were summer sandstorms in Guanzhong, major floods in Shandong and Henan, and earthquakes in Guanzhong in the tenth month.
In the eighth year, landslides in Longyou, and major floods in Shandong and the Jiang–Huai region.
In the ninth year, drought returned.
In the tenth year, floods followed by epidemics.
In the eleventh year, floods first, then earthquakes…
This continued all the way until the year 658, when twenty-six consecutive years of annual natural disasters finally came to a brief halt.
Yet in reality, the number of natural disasters in the middle and late Tang was not much better than in the early period. Here we can directly cite conclusions from modern scholars specializing in Sui–Tang history:
"Compared to the early period, seismic activity in the later Tang was more active; floods in the middle and late periods occurred more than fifty percent more often than in the early period and mostly in summer and autumn; wind disasters in the later period were more frequent, with the highest occurrence rate in June."
It could be said that Second Feng may have reminisced about the disaster-free years of Zhenguan Five and Six until the day he died.
But what Second Feng absolutely could not have imagined was that the Tang dynasty's 'good days' were still ahead.
Earthquakes can be set aside for now. Floods and wind disasters are worth discussing.
The climatic characteristics of early Tang were warm and humid. According to current research results:
From the year 630 onward, the following two hundred years constituted the longest continuous rainy period in China over the past three thousand years.
Abundant rainfall naturally increased the proportion of flood disasters. However, this warming period in the Tang had already declined around the year 700, and by the time of the An Lushan Rebellion had returned to the historical average.
Thus, while the latter part of this two-hundred-year rainy period received less rainfall than the early part, floods in the later Tang still exceeded those of the early period. This is not particularly reasonable.
The most plausible explanation is that environmental destruction during the Sui dynasty and early Tang left large areas of exposed ground. When faced with abundant rainfall, soil erosion became more severe, further degrading the environment.
Such an environment also had less resistance to excessive rainfall, ultimately forming a vicious cycle that accelerated environmental deterioration.
The result was that by the time the rainy period had largely ended in the middle and late Tang, the natural environment emerging from that vicious cycle was already nearly ruined.
Wind disasters follow the same logic.
Just like modern Beijing after the founding of the nation: without forests to anchor the soil and block the wind, one can only endure annual gales and eat sand.
Records of severe sandstorms in Beijing date back to the Yuan dynasty. They persisted through the Ming and Qing, and even after the founding of the nation, sandstorms were still a frequent menace.
The root cause is that since the Ming dynasty, China's forest coverage rate never exceeded fifteen percent. By the fall of the Qing, it had dropped to a mere eight percent.
Today, through returning farmland to forests and large-scale reforestation, China's forest coverage has reached twenty-three percent, making it the best the environment has been in the past thousand years.]