Awesome! In the era when there was no express delivery, ancient people transported things like this.

Zheng Xue Fei Teng | Wen

After entering the year end, major express delivery companies have closed down one after another. For hands-chopping people, who is used to "shipping in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" and "ordering immediately and delivering on the same day", the express delivery suddenly closed down, and life seems to be extremely inconvenient. If you want to buy something online, you have to wait for years before it can be delivered.

This inconvenience often makes people think, perhaps before the rise of express delivery, what kind of logistics system did our parents experience? Twenty years ago, what kind of material transfer did people need to go through to get their favorite items? Even further back, in ancient China, how did the ancients achieve efficient logistics?

The "Luhe Duyun Map" painted by Jiang Xuan, a painter in Qing Dynasty (partially), shows the grand occasion of Tongzhou water transport.

Reasonable organization of transportation

China’s ancient thought of "logistics" has a long history. Although the so-called "logistics" here is very different from today’s concept, literally, for the effective flow of "things", various governments have designed a series of systems.

Due to the great differences in scenery in different regions within the unified empire, as Sang Hongyang said in the Western Han Dynasty: "The bamboo of wuyue, the material of Sui and Tang Dynasties, cannot be used … while Zou, Lu, Zhou, Han, and Chenopodium are not unique, and the few are not unique." In order to balance the products in different regions of China, rich logistics means came into being.

In ancient Chinese, the logistics capacity was improved mainly from the aspects of transportation tools, checkpoint roads, transportation organization, transportation system and goods storage. The first two are easy to understand, and we mainly focus on them today.Transportation organization, system and storage.

The ancient people only had two modes of transportation: water transportation and land transportation. Among them, land transportation certainly existed, otherwise the golden sentence "Riding a princess in the world of mortals and laughing, no one knew it was litchi" could not be written. Different from this small and refined transportation, more often the transportation scale is extremely large, so it is necessary to carry the task by the caravan camel team that shuttles between mountains and rivers and deserts.

Generally speaking, water transport actually played a more important role in ancient times. Especially in the farming era, grain, as a very important resource, is often located in the capital and grain-producing areas.

A ride to the smoke and smoke billowing smile, no one knew that the south sent the fresh fruit of litchi.

In order to transport grain effectively, the ancients also designed a set of transportation organization, in which important strategies such as setting up warehouses along the river and transporting in sections were adopted. During the period of Tang Gaozong, when transporting grain to Chang ‘an, all localities had to cross the Huaihe River into the Yellow River via Bianshui, and finally arrived in Chang ‘an. However, the Yellow River is dangerous and difficult to sail, especially in Sanmenxia area. According to the Book of the Old Tang Dynasty, in order to solve this problem, in the late Kaiyuan period, Prime Minister Pei Yaoqing changed direct transportation to feeder transportation, and set up river warehouses in various river sections. "The general principle of water runs with the proximity, and it is accommodated in the warehouse when it is impassable. It does not delay the ship far away, and it does not worry about long-term consumption, which is more than twice as beneficial as long-term transportation in the open year."

The scene of the Qing Dynasty post station exhibited in the Postal Museum.

Sectional transportation took place after the Anshi Rebellion. According to the different water potentials of the Canal, Huaihe River, Bianhe River, Yellow River and Weihe River, Prime Minister Liu Yan adopted different sizes of ships for sectional transportation. This situation is recorded in the Book of the New Tang Dynasty: "River boats don’t enter the Bian River, Bian boats don’t enter the river, and river boats don’t enter the Weihe River; The transportation of the south of the Yangtze River accumulates in Yangzhou, the transportation of the Bianhe River accumulates in the shade of the river, the transportation of the river boat accumulates in Weikou, and the transportation of the boat into Taicang. At the age of one, 1.1 million stones were transferred, and no one was drowned. " At that time, in order to facilitate the loading and unloading during transshipment and salvage in the water, the goods were also changed to bags.

Oriental IC Data Map of Tongxing Escort Agency in Pingyao Ancient City

Transportation system

In addition to the effective organization of transportation behavior on the transportation distance, the ancient government was also very good at mobilizing private forces to join the transportation and formulating corresponding institutional measures to promote transportation. The system of each dynasty was complicated and varied, and it was often further improved on the experience of the previous generation.

In Salt and Iron Theory, it is recorded that Sang Hongyang’s "equal loss" system in the Western Han Dynasty, that is, all the tributes should have been sent to Beijing, and the central government sent equal loss officials to all the places. After checking the tributes that must be delivered, all the other tributes were sold at market prices. In this way, it not only eliminates the need for freight transportation, but also enables the government to earn profits from it, thus forming an effective government-run commercial network throughout the country.

Part of The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival. In ancient times, pack transportation was an important mode of transportation.

When Zhou Chen, a famous minister of Yongle Dynasty in Ming Dynasty, became the governor of Jiangnan, there were both military and pro-democracy movements when Jiangnan grain was transported to Beijing. The government set a certain amount of "rice consumption" in addition to the "rice consumption" (grain and rice levied to make up for transportation losses and expenses). Because rats and birds eat rice, float in the water and rot in the process of transportation, the losses often exceed the given amount of "rice consumption", which makes the burden of the people carrying husbands heavy.

To this end, Zhou Chen reformed the transportation system, replacing the original three grain chiefs and deputy grain chiefs from each township with one grain chief and one deputy grain chief to take turns to transport grain to Beijing. Further change the original separation of military transport and democracy movement into military-civilian exchange transport. Jiangnan rice was transported to Huai ‘an or Guazhou by the people’s movement, and then transported to Tongzhou by the army, thus reducing the consumption of rice in water transportation.

With the increase of population, demand and the development of water transport in the capital, there were also professional transport households and specialized transport intermediaries in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which were called "tooth people". According to scholars’ research, in order to find reliable shippers to deliver goods, shippers at that time needed to be introduced by people, otherwise, it would be easy to steal goods and even steal them to escape. Tooth people act as middlemen for water transport professionals and shippers.

Goods storage

Efficient logistics, on the one hand, depends on the convenience of transportation, and on the other hand, it is inseparable from the nearby goods storage. "Nearby storage" has become another important part of China’s ancient logistics thought. It is worth noting that the so-called "warehouse" and "warehouse" have a special distinction. The warehouse is used for storing grain, while the warehouse keeps other materials.

In Mozi’s era, due to the consideration of war, the perennial accumulation in the city was emphasized. In Mozi Banner, there are "all the methods of guarding the city, stones have accumulated, firewood has accumulated, management has accumulated, reeds have accumulated, wood has accumulated, charcoal has accumulated, sand has accumulated, pines and cypresses have accumulated, Peng Ai has accumulated, hemp has accumulated, and gold and iron have accumulated."

This is in view of the preparations for the war in the city. Due to the status of the royal family and "just need", the initial storage was concentrated in the capital. Geng Shouchang, a senior farmer in the Western Han Dynasty, clearly opposed this arrangement. He suggested that "all the border counties should build warehouses" and opposed the grain storage being too concentrated in the capital and leading to the establishment of warehouses.

Founded in the 23rd year of Qianlong (1758), Jichang granary in Qing Dynasty in Xinjiang.

In Zi Zhi Tong Jian, there is also Emperor Yangdi’s idea that "it is better to accumulate in people than to have a treasury". By the Yuan Dynasty, Liu Bingzhong, a politician who laid the foundation for the Yuan system and today’s capital city of Beijing, put forward the idea that "it is better to take advantage of the near warehouse and lose" in view of the phenomenon that "grain is far away from the warehouse, and there is one waste of ten".

Looking at the warehouses scattered all over the country, we can also find that three principles were basically valued when building warehouses in ancient dynasties: convenient transportation, setting up nearby, and relying on mountains and rivers.

references

Su Kewu: China’s Ancient Logistics Thought (Historical Monthly, No.3, 1998).