It is said that in the three thousand years of China, look at Shaanxi, and in the five thousand years of China, look at Shanxi. Shanxi indeed has a rich history and culture, and is worthy of being a museum of ancient culture. There are ancient city mansions, Buddhist temples, grotto monuments, ancient pagodas and tombs, and dangerous fortresses and passes everywhere. Thousands of years of Chinese civilization are buried in the loess soil in the ravines...
Shanxi belongs to North China and has always been an important "border town" in my country! Shanxi has always been the "natural Great Wall" of the Central Plains dynasty and the Han nation! Shanxi is referred to as "Jin" and is also known as Dragon City!
Whether it is the internal war that started in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when princes competed for hegemony and annexed the world to unify, or the Han nation fought against external aggression, Shanxi has always been the frontline outpost of the war! From Yanmen, Yunzhong, and Daijun in the Qin and Han Dynasties to Datong, Shanxi, and Xuanfu in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it has always been the frontier of the Central Plains dynasty to resist the southward invasion of northern minorities! Until modern times, the mountains and rivers inside and outside Shanxi were the forefront of resisting Japanese invaders! These Shanxi place names that are familiar in history are a symbol of Shanxi as the steel backbone of the Chinese nation!
When China is in trouble, the land of the Three Jin Dynasties is the first to bear the brunt! To this day, there is still a legend about the lady passing Princess Pingyang, and the remains of the smoke and war in the Pingxing Pass! Perhaps there has never been a shortage of legends of heroes and beauties under the city of Taiyuan. The combination of dragon city flying generals and palace maids and beautiful ladies at the frontier allowed Shanxi, a regional city full of rough and arrogant people, to be rich in beauties like Wu Zetian, who dominated the vast history. Countless heroes have sweated all over their face!
If you search, you will find that among the celebrities in Shanxi, there are emperors like Jin Wengong and Wu Zetian; there are prime ministers like Lin Xiangru, Di Renjie, Wen Yanbo, and Sima Guang; there are Lian Po, Wei Qing, Huo Qubing, and Guan Yu , Xue Rengui, and Yang Ye; there are famous figures such as Wang Bo, Wang Zhihuan, Wang Wei, Wang Changling, Liu Zongyuan, Bai Juyi, Mi Fu, Bai Pu, Guan Hanqing, Zheng Guangzu, Luo Guanzhong, and Fu Shan... Behind each name are displayed Immortal civil and military skills can be described as the shining stars of mankind.
Although it is located in the north, Shanxi never lacks beautiful scenery! As Guo Lanying, an old artist from Pingyao, sang: "People say that Shanxi has beautiful scenery, fertile land, beautiful water, and fragrant grains. The left hand points to the Taihang Mountains, and the right hand points to Luliang. Standing on that high point and looking up, look at the water of the Fen River. , flows by my small village!" And Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi, is located between Taihang and Luliang. The Fenhe River passing through the city also happens to divide the city into the new city and the old city.
In middle school texts, most of us have studied Wu Boxiao's prose "The Fountain of Difficulty in Aging" and know the story of Tong Ye's brother-in-law in the Zhou Dynasty and the division of Jin into three families in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Many people come here to relive the countless allusions from past dynasties in Jinci Temple. In the evening, the huge Jinci Temple courtyard is empty. The quaint pavilions and pavilions are particularly solemn under the setting sun. There are towering ancient trees that are winding like horned dragons. The Shifang Fengsheng Zen Temple, which was rebuilt from the villa of Yu Chigong, the Tang Dynasty general, is filled with Zen sounds. Zhou Bai and Tang Huai will let you have a wonderful time. A sense of passing through the vicissitudes of history.
In addition, there are ancestral halls with the surname Zhang and Wang in the Jin Temple. It is said that King Zhang in the world came out of Taiyuan. It’s not surprising that the origin of caste is here!
The big locust tree in Hongdong is the "root" of the Chinese people
Speaking of which, this is also because Shanxi has Luliang Taihang, and is protected by the Yellow River, plus the Great Wall in northern Shanxi. It retained a relatively intact population during the war era!
In order to restore production at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty ordered the Shanxi people with better population preservation to be relocated to 18 cities including Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Beijing, and Jiangsu where the population was declining sharply. Province, more than 500 counties and cities! Among them, the population migration of Dahuaishu in Hongdong County, Shanxi is the most famous!
From the sixth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1373) to the fifteenth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1417), for more than 40 years, the destruction of the big locust tree in Hongdong County was carried out. More than ten large-scale immigrations! So much so that many people across the country now believe that they are descendants of immigrants from Shanxi in the early Ming Dynasty.
Of course, the fact that Shanxi people abandon their hometowns is also related to the lack of local resource conditions - 80% of the terrain in Shanxi is mountainous, which means that it is even more difficult for Shanxi people to survive on the land. - and related to the relatively long cold season!
This also inspired the adventurous spirit of Shanxi people to conquer the world: "Brother, please go to the west entrance. I can't keep my little sister, so I hold my brother's hand and send him to the gate." This sad poem The miserable song "Walking to the West Passage" has been sung for a long time, telling the sorrow of countless newlyweds' separation and death, and also crying about the hardships of Shanxi people in modern times to make a living abroad. Friends in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, said that most Baotou people are from Shanxi and came to Baotou from the west entrance.
When I was a child, I studied Zhao Shuli’s Yam Egg School novels, which are full of peasant-oriented ideas and local color. They are full of enthusiasm for life. Gradually, Shanxi is a barren land in my eyes. I rely on agriculture to learn from Dazhai's hard work, a banner for land reclamation, and a great image like the peasant Prime Minister Chen Yonggui and the iron girl Guo Fenglian.
But at the same time, due to their risk-taking and diligence, many Shanxi people accumulated a lot of wealth in the business era.
So when it comes to Shanxi, it is difficult for you to judge whether it is rich or not.
Shanxi merchants: leaping forward in border town trade
When I was in middle school, I read "Ashamed of Shanxi" by Yu Qiuyu, and found that I also misunderstood Shanxi too much.
Shanxi in history is rich, and Pingyao, Qixian and Taigu are the richest in the world. This is mainly due to the characteristics of Shanxi's terrain and the convenience of being a "border town" in the past and present, which has given rise to the material demand brought about by Shanxi's war border towns, strengthened Shanxi's commercial heritage, genes and culture, and allowed Shanxi to enjoy the benefits of being a war border town because of the war. Bonus logistical supplies and direct business benefits from early port trade!
As a result, Shanxi merchant gangs developed rapidly from the early Ming Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. They specialized in border trade and gradually played the role of north-south cargo trading and long-distance transshipment, forming the Yuci Changjia, Tai The Gucao family, the Qixian Qiao family, the Pingyao Li family, the Lingshi Wang family and other giant merchant families, and the salt industry and banknote business became the main business of Shanxi merchant gangs, especially the banknote business played the role of the central bank in the Qing Dynasty for a long time. .
Even in the Republic of China, when Shanxi's bank accounts were completely in decline, representatives of Shanxi businessmen were also in charge of the "financial power" of the National Government in South China, where the Jiangsu and Zhejiang plutocrats dominated! We have all heard about the feats of Shanxi merchants in opening up the northern commercial market. Whether it was "walking to the west entrance" or "Qiao Family Courtyard", the complete rise of Shanxi merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties was accompanied by hard work and the courage to pioneer and innovate. spirit!
In "Yongzheng Dynasty", many court officials commented on Shanxi as "the old people in Shanxi gather wealth"!
However, time has changed, and with the end of the era of world rights of way and the rise of maritime trade, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong merchant gangs, as representatives of China, have completely replaced Shanxi merchant gangs and traveled the world! And today's Shanxi has also transformed from a border town into an inland area due to changes in land consolidation and sea power trade!
This commercial town that flourished during the Ming and Qing Dynasties was replaced by a coastal city! But fate is actually not kind to Shanxi. Because of the existence of coal resources, Shanxi has become the "coal" capital of China!
Regarding coal in Shanxi, it was recorded as early as in the "Shan Hai Jing", "The Mengmen Mountain has a lot of green jade and gold on it, and a lot of yellow jade and doni stone on the bottom." The mountain has a lot of green jade on it, and a lot of yellow chalk and donite on the bottom. "This "nishi" is the ancient name for coal. Among them, Mengmen probably refers to the mountainous area of ??Jixian County in the south of today's Hedong Coalfield, while "Mountain of Cardiamen" generally refers to the Taihang Mountains area. During countless cold winters, this "nirvana stone" has warmed Shanxi people and can be used to "warm wine and grill meat." In addition, it is also used for smelting iron, smelting copper, burning lime, burning bricks, making pottery, and extracting black vitriol and sulfur from coal. This also gave rise to the custom of "promoting fire" in Shanxi. It is recorded in Guangxu's "Annals of Pingding Prefecture" that "on the eve of the Yuan Dynasty, every family burns charcoal, and it is refined (burned) until the end of the night. The flames are bright and the light gas rises. The sky is red..."
The large coal reserves and long mining time make Shanxi stand out again as China enters a period of great modernization transformation.
Today, we need to repay Shanxi
Today’s China needs to be grateful to Shanxi for its contributions over the years.
Especially since the 1980s and 1990s, the country has implemented the strategic decision of "strengthening the east and moving westward" in coal development, thereby establishing the national energy base with Shanxi as the center. Due to its strategic position, Shanxi has become the most convenient coal producing area in the new era to implement "coal transportation from the west to the east and coal from the north to the south" to developed provinces and regions with rapid economic development across the country. Shanxi Coal's market share once reached 80%.
According to the 2020 National Economic and Social Development Statistical Bulletin released by the National Bureau of Statistics, national coal consumption in 2020 was 4.04 billion tons. Among them, the national raw coal output above designated size is 3.84 billion tons, and Shanxi coal output is 1.063 billion tons. Shanxi's coal output accounts for 27.68% of the national coal output and meets 26.3% of the national coal consumption.
Without Shanxi’s coal, China’s industrialization and urbanization would not have developed so rapidly. Even in the face of this torrential rain, Shanxi is still working hard to ensure the supply of coal to 14 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in the fourth quarter. Shanxi will give full play to its mission as a major coal-producing province, strive to increase coal production, dynamically stabilize coal prices, ensure national energy security, and support the economic construction of brother provinces.
This makes people cannot help but respect Shanxi as a man. It gives contributions to others but keeps problems to itself. In other words, over the years, coal in Shanxi has become a success and coal has failed!
Due to the failure to transform from the coal industry as early as possible, many cities have suffered from the "curse of resources", and the sky is as gray as Linfen smog everywhere.
This also squeezed out Shanxi's private economy and creative vitality, and ended the once-splendid light industry. Now the coal industry, which is too big to fail, has become a heavy burden for transformation.
And this heavy rain also allowed us to see the consequences of excessive coal mining in Shanxi over the years, that is, the natural ecology was completely "lost" in this heavy rain. Judging from the news exposure, , there are only two lonely sleepers left in the Changyuan River Bridge, and the losses caused by the collapse of countless land parcels are countless!
The emergence of Jia Zhangke and his movies has made people see another Shanxi, such as "Xiao Wu", "Platform", "Ren Xiaoyao" and "Old Friend in Mountains and Rivers", a small and isolated county town with antique towers. and the desolate land, the Shanxi dialect with a strong nasal accent comes out harsh and tasteful, the trucks pulling black coal and the loess raised on the road... The tone of Shanxi depicted in the lens is gray, and the fate of the characters is all affected by it. Let go of ridicule and alienation.
But at the same time, some coal bosses who became rich overnight also attracted the attention of others with their exaggerated style! Let us also have mixed feelings about Shanxi!
But no matter what, we all need to thank Shanxi today, not only because of the spiritual inspiration of Shanxi people and the commercial contributions of Shanxi people, but also because it has selflessly supported the modernization of the entire China! Warm the whole China!
The people across the country owe the people of Shanxi a ‘I’m sorry’! ", maybe the hot searches and warmth will be late, but they will not be late! This is a Chinese tradition.
Although there is a stubbornness behind Shanxi's request for help from foreign countries, as this passage says, "Shanxi is so good. Every time, it gets up on its own, looks down at the scars, says "Come on, come on," and then pushes away. "Build up your own little coal truck", but China has always been a whole. This is the unity that has been tested by fighting against the enemy and tested by previous catastrophes!
The Chinese people will never forget our relatives. Because of unity and unity, we are called the Chinese nation!
In the face of catastrophic disasters, the Chinese people have never been alone in the situation. No one asks whether Jin is a Chinese tradition. What China needs is always "Jin is good and Jin is beautiful"!