My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 363: The Rising Zhang River is a Double-edged Sword
It was a day at the end of March, the eighth year of Jian'an.

Langya County, various counties, Rizhao Town.

Several important officials in Liu Bei's camp who are in control of the situation in Xuzhou gathered here for a rare occasion.

Taking advantage of the free time to prepare for the battle, I watched the excitement and observed the new achievements that Zhuge Jin had made in the past few months.
On the other hand, it was estimated that Yuan Tan would send people to ask for help and surrender in the near future, and Zhu County was the northernmost part of Liu Bei's camp's current nominal territory, so it would be easier for Zhuge Jin and others to contact Yuan Tan if they came to the border.

With the help of the newly trained carrier pigeons, any progress in the latest negotiations with Yuan Tan could be easily sent to Hefei to report to Liu Bei. The round trip was convenient and could save at least half of the return time.

The place of Zhuxian was actually the fief of Zhuge Jin - he was granted the title of a proper "Prince" in the fourth year of Jian'an, that is, the Marquis of Zhuxian, just like Lu Bu's Marquis of Wen, both of whom were one-character marquises.

But because this place has always been in the hands of other princes, he, as a prince, did not visit his legal fiefdom for the first time until this year.

Last year, he just asked his third brother Zhuge Jun to come here to serve as the county magistrate and asked Lu Su to come here to serve as the prefect of Langya to help him govern and reorganize the situation.

Legally speaking, Zhuge Jin's fiefdom was limited to the number of households. Cao Cao granted him 2,000 households in name, but of course he actually had none. Later, in order to sow discord between him and Liu Bei, he added another 1,000 households after Zhuge Jin participated in the destruction of Huang Zu.

Originally, Zhu County was a small mountainous county, the coastal land was not developed, and the population was not large. Even if all the counties were added together, there would not be enough households.

However, as Liu Bei's camp took actual control of this place last year, they needed to use it as a hub and springboard for sailing northward, so they newly built Rizhao Town and Rizhao Port. Within just one year, all the counties experienced great development.

The population of Rizhao, a small port town, is larger than that of the county town in the Shushui River Valley deep in the Yimeng Mountains. With the connection of the sea route, the import and export of goods and food supplies has become much more convenient.

The small plains in the coastal valleys, which were originally not cost-effective to develop, can now be developed piece by piece to grow crops and vegetables to provide supplies for the industrial and commercial population of the port.

Most of the trees are densely planted on the hillside facing the sea. However, they have only been planted for more than a year, so they are not yet mature and have no production.

After just over a year of construction, the total population of the counties has already expanded to more than 5,000 households.

In theory, only 3,000 households were exempt from tax, and the taxes that should have been paid were used by Zhuge Jin for personal use. The remaining households still had to pay taxes and grain to the local government for military and government expenses.

However, obviously no one in Liu Bei's camp would be the bad guy, and Liu Bei himself was also a good person. No matter how many people the counties had in the future, they would always be Zhuge Jin's private land.

Are you kidding? Zhuge Jin's contribution to Liu Bei was so great that he actually enjoyed the rent and taxes of an entire county. Isn't this the treatment that the Han Dynasty deserves for its loyal and good people?

……

"I never thought that this place would become so prosperous after only a year of governance after it was ceded to our army by Yuan Tan. Who could have believed that at this time two years ago, there was not even a town here, only a few fishermen."

Guan Yu and others, accompanied by the county governor Lu Su, wandered around the town of Rizhao Port and took a boat tour near the coast. After returning to the shore, they couldn't help but sigh.

On the top of a hill near the port, you can see a pigeon farm that Lu Su had just built, where some researchers responsible for breeding and training pigeons are working.

The reason why we chose to establish this research and cultivation base in Rizhao is that this is the northeasternmost part of Liu Bei's nominal territory. If we find out the latest situation of the northern princes, we can send a fast messenger from here and let the messenger carry a few cages of pigeons. When we reply, we just need to release the pigeons.

This training program is still in the trial and error stage. So every ten days or half a month, someone will leave here on horseback to deliver a letter to Hefei. After arriving in Hefei, they will tie the reply letter to the pigeon's leg and send it back.

The original custom in the Han Dynasty was to release seven or eight pigeons for a distance of 300 miles to ensure that one would return home. However, the straight-line distance between Hefei and Rizhao is exactly 1,000 miles, which is three times longer. No one knew how many pigeons needed to be released to ensure that one would return home.

So at the first test at the beginning of the year, Lu Su sent a cart carrying 50 pigeons to Hefei and released them. In the end, he found that four pigeons actually came back, which was a very good result. After a few months of running-in, the efficiency became higher and higher.

The latest test was conducted seven days ago when someone was sent to Hefei. The messenger only had to travel 200 miles a day, and it was not too hard. The number of pigeons taken away was also reduced to 20, so there was no need to use a carriage to carry them, which would be much more convenient.

According to the plan, today should be the day for the pigeons to fly back.

Lu Su and Zhuge Jun had watched this experiment several times, but it was Guan Yu's first time to watch such an experiment, and he was quite interested. He rested in Rizhao Town, had people prepare wine and a banquet, and talked and had fun with Zhuge Jin, Lu Su, and Zhuge Jun while waiting to see the fun.

The people accompanying him immediately served him some new local specialties of Rizhao. Guan Yu was also a man who could endure hardships and was not picky about food and drink. Coming to such a seaside town, of course he would live by the sea and not blindly pursue luxury.

"What is this?" Guan Yu picked up a fruit on the table that he was not familiar with and asked curiously.

Zhuge Jin took the opportunity to show off, "This is a lingong, which is slightly different from the one native to Liaodong. Although it is still a bit sour and has a large core, I think it can be cultivated well. We can use the seed selection method to select those with small cores and sweet taste, which may benefit the people in the future.

Although fruits are not easy to preserve, they can make full use of hillside land, which is a benefit for places with dense industrial and commercial populations and insufficient arable land. Ordinary people will not think about how to breed fruits because fruits cannot be taxed and are not easy to sell.

But when a place has a large population of people who don't farm, the supplementary food can be consumed locally without being shipped out, so those disadvantages are not important. Anyway, the counties are my fiefdoms, and I don't have to pay taxes to the court. I can adjust the local tax collection method as I want, and it's just right for a governance experiment. Moreover, this fruit should be relatively easier to store than other fruits. If it is well selected and bred in the future, I think it will be fine to keep it for a few months."

The so-called Lingo is the apple brought from its origin in Liaodong during the Han Dynasty. It is not the same as the fleshy and sweet apple eaten in later generations. The apples in later generations are the improved varieties reintroduced in modern times.

The core of the apples in the Han Dynasty was large, not very sweet, and in short, the characteristics were very poor. But Zhuge Jin also knew that the apples in Rizhao, Shandong Province were very famous in later generations, and thought that the slopes in this place might be used, so he asked people to select and cultivate apples. On the one hand, it was to make full use of the rotten land, and on the other hand, it was also because apples had a long shelf life and were suitable for storage. As for breeding and selection, he and Zhuge Liang both mastered the common sense of biological genetics, and when they had time, they would point out the breeding rules of local farmers, and in time, there would definitely be improvements.

This kind of thing doesn't require much effort, and it doesn't matter if we don't see obvious results in the short term. Just think of it as planting trees for future generations to enjoy the shade.

After listening to Zhuge Jin's ideas, Guan Yu found them respectable. He no longer complained about the sourness of the apples. He ate two and found that although they were sour, they also had a unique and refreshing taste.

There are also some local seafood dishes on the table.
A kind of dried scallop meat that is much larger than clams but not scallops.
There are also dried shrimps, fresh bamboo clams and sea intestines that are nearly a foot long, all of which are steamed with ginger and seasoned with sauce.

Guan Yu originally thought that when he came to the coast where Qing and Xu met, he would be able to see various sea fish banquets like those on the Huaiyang coast in the south.

After all, after Zhuge Jin improved the gillnet fishing method, the Huaihe River estuary and the Yangtze River estuary, as well as the Han Canal estuary, all relied on tidal fishing to make a lot of money. The civil and military officials of Liu Bei's camp, and even the soldiers in the army, as long as they were stationed in Guangling and other places, had eaten a lot of fish in recent years.

I didn't expect that when I arrived at the coast of Shandong Peninsula, there were fewer large fish than in the south because there were no large rivers flowing into the sea. In contrast, the number of shrimps, crabs and shellfish increased dramatically.

Zhuge Jin also spent some time to improve the fishing equipment and slightly optimized the original tools that the fishermen originally used to catch small seafood. The effect was immediate, and these small seafood alone could easily feed several counties.

However, Zhuge Jin was cautious and knew that the parasite problem of shellfish might be more serious than that of fish, so when he ate shrimp, crab and shellfish, he always requested that they be steamed thoroughly with ginger, preferring to not have the so-called "extremely fresh and tender" taste.

The cold weather in the north is not suitable for growing ginger, so Zhuge Jin asked Mi Zhu to transport a large amount of ginger from the south by sea. Anyway, Mi Zhu's shipping costs are already very low now, and his family is in this business, so of course he would not refuse.

As a result, the Mi family formed the habit of ordering large quantities of ginger and spices from Wang Lang's territory every year and transporting them north to the Qingxu coast for sale.

When there was not enough ginger, Zhuge Jin first promoted the cultivation of garlic in Shandong. Garlic is very adaptable to the climate of Shandong. In later generations, Shandong has become the main production area of scallions and garlic.

People in the Han Dynasty also had the habit of using garlic juice to detoxify. The "Records of the Three Kingdoms. Biographies of Prescriptions and Techniques" clearly records that in history Hua Tuo detoxified Chen Deng from a parasitic disease caused by eating raw fish by "giving him three liters of garlic juice to drink, and the patient vomited out the worms."

It's just that the Han people didn't have the habit of using so much garlic paste when cooking. Only doctors knew the principle, and ordinary people were not used to it and couldn't afford it. The rich and powerful could afford it but didn't know the principle, so they didn't think of using it.

This can be regarded as a precedent set by Zhuge Jin. From then on, Shandong cuisine had a seasoning style that heavily used minced ginger and minced garlic.

The local people in the counties did not understand at first. They just heard that Zhuhou had a very "strong taste" and liked to "pursue smelly" food. Later, after getting used to it, they found that the strong smell of garlic seemed to be quite addictive.

This was Guan Yu's first time trying it today, and he was a little uncomfortable at first. After pinching his nose and eating several one-foot-long razor clams and sea intestines, he finally realized the wonderfulness of this seasoning of minced garlic, ginger and sauce.

As he ate, Guan Yu couldn't help but sigh about the hardships of life: "Zi Yu really knows everything. He can cook such a delicious meal for a poor fisherman to fill his stomach.

But ginger has to be shipped from the south by sea, and ordinary people probably can't afford it, right? Ordinary poor families can only use several times more garlic instead of ginger, because garlic is grown locally and is not valuable. "

After he finished speaking, he just put down his chopsticks and wiped his mouth when suddenly a servant came in quickly from the door and whispered something to Lu Su.

Guan Yu immediately looked at Lu Su, who waved to his attendant to leave, explaining: "This is also good news. The pigeons that the messenger took to Hefei seven days ago have returned. This time, five out of twenty have returned. This is really a rapid improvement.

It seems that the reason why people usually use homing pigeons is inefficient is not entirely because of the harm caused by birds of prey, but more because they are not tamed properly and lose their way. When I first tried this method last year, only one or two out of ten birds returned after traveling 300 miles. It is estimated that at least four or five of them got lost, and two or three were eaten by birds of prey.

The problem of being captured and killed by birds of prey cannot be solved for the time being, but as long as the problem of losing one's way back to the wild is solved, and the journey of a thousand miles is improved, if only one or two can fly back out of five, that would be impressive enough.

It only takes a little over a day to fly from Hefei to here, which is much more convenient than sending a courier. When I negotiate with Yuan Tan in a few days, I can save at least 30% to 40% of the time for asking for instructions."

Guan Yu stroked his beard and smiled contemptuously: "Negotiation with Yuan Tan, do you still need to ask for instructions? Big brother has given Ziyu full authority to make arbitrary decisions."

Zhuge Jin on the side was unusually low-key: "The lord's trust is one thing, but pretending to ask for instructions can also help put pressure on Yuan Tan's envoy and make Yuan Tan realize that 'it's difficult for us to do it'.

Therefore, when Yuan Tan's envoys arrive, we invite them to visit the carrier pigeons we have bred, so that they will believe, "We have asked Hefei for instructions and will get a reply in a few days." Wouldn't this increase the frequency of pressure?

We can do without it, but we cannot live without it, especially to let our allies know that we have it.”

Guan Yu: "I don't know when Yuan Tan's men will arrive. Nanpi is already under siege, why hasn't he surrendered yet?"

Zhuge Jin: "It will be soon. The north is cold. At the beginning of spring, the Zhang River has not thawed, and we cannot use our navy to reinforce Nanpi and bring in supplies. When Yuan Tan asked us for help, we could not help him much, so he might as well not ask for it.

Now it is the end of March, the water level of Zhangshui has risen again, and large ships can sail into the river. It is time for us to bring our naval advantages into play, but Yuan Tan is unable to carry out spring ploughing in Bohai County.

Cao Cao and we are all farming, except for the county of Jizhou controlled by Yuan Tan. Seeing that the Nanpi garrison could not get food supplies after the spring famine, he asked us for help.

But speaking of the spring flood and the rising water level of the Zhang River, in the upper reaches of the Zhang River, should Cao Cao also launch an offensive in Yecheng? The rising water level of the Zhang River is a double-edged sword. "

(End of this chapter)