among the frequent droughts in the Qing dynasty, the biggest and most devastating one was the drought in north China in the early Guangxu period.
this drought is characterized by a long time, a wide range and particularly serious consequences. From 1876 to 1879, the drought lasted for four years; The affected areas are Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Zhili (now Hebei), Shandong and other five northern provinces, and spread to northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui, eastern Gansu and northern Sichuan. The drought in the early morning not only made the agricultural products fail, but also made the countryside barren. Hunger carries the road, white bones are full of wild ",and the number of people who starve to death has reached more than 1 million! Because the drought was mainly in 1877 and 1878, and the years of the lunar calendar in these two years belonged to Ding Chou and Wu Yin, people called it "Ding Wu Qi Huang". Because of the worst drought in Henan and Shanxi, it is also known as "Jin Yu Qi Huang" and "Jin Yu Da Hunger".
this great drought started in the first year of Guangxu (1875). This year, most of the northern provinces showed signs of drought, and the Jingshi and Zhili areas showed disasters in mid-spring. Until winter. There is still little rain. At the same time, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and other provinces all experienced severe droughts after this autumn.
in the second year of Guangxu (1876), the drought worsened and the affected area was further expanded. Zhili, Shandong and Henan are the main disaster areas, Liaoning in the north, Shaanxi and Gansu in the west and Jiangsu and Anhui in the south, forming an unprecedented vast arid area.
In Jingshi and Zhili areas, the harvest of the whole province was halved due to the aggravation of drought. Droughts triggered locust plagues, from the north of Tianjin to? In the south, locusts cover the sky and devour the withered crops. Between summer and autumn, due to the continuous rain, the Daqing River, Hutuo River, Zhulong River, South Canal, Zhanghe River and Weihe River flooded at the same time, resulting in the land suffering from drought and locust flooding. In this year, Zhili Province suffered from floods, droughts, winds and hail in 63 counties.
The disaster situation in Henan Province is similar to that in Zhili. From spring to summer, the drought is getting worse. Especially in zhang de, Huaiqing and Weihui, which are north of the Yellow River, Zaoqian is more severe. After the summer, the drought eased slightly, but zhang de, Weihui and Gwangju were flooded again, and the fields were flooded. However, as far as the situation in the whole province is concerned, drought is still dominant. The province's agricultural harvest failed, reducing production by about half. Therefore, "there are many poor people who lack food". In Kaifeng alone, there are more than 7, victims who rely on disaster relief porridge factories to eat.
this year, there was drought all year round in Shandong province. Except for some small areas such as Zhangqiu, which were slightly flooded for a while, most areas suffered from drought, and the harvest in the province was less than three points. "Shandong Tongzhi" said that the province was "drought and people were hungry" that year. According to the "Shen Bao", due to the drought, victims all over Shandong have fled, made famine or prayed for rain. But praying for rain is of no help. Everywhere, "there are many people who are hungry and whose wives sell their children, and their suffering is unspeakable" (Shen Bao, December 11, 1876).
Hiderigami abused the south, which affected northern Jiangsu and northern Anhui. From the spring of this year to the end of this year, it rained all the time, and large tracts of farmland in Haizhou (now Lianyungang) and cotton fields were reduced or grazing was extinct. The drought triggered a plague of locusts and the seedlings were swallowed up. Under the pressure of drought and locust, the victims were "countless people who fled and starved to death" Some victims even "prey on others if they are hungry", resulting in "travelers often disappear and avoid binding their feet". The social order in northern Jiangsu has become turbulent due to the severe drought. In order to survive, hungry people have crossed the river to the south, and more than 9 thousand refugees have been taken in by local officials and local gentry in southern Jiangsu in Jiangsu, Songtai, Jiangyin, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou.
the drought in northern Anhui is similar to that in northern Jiangsu. After the summer, the drought continued; In many places, even the seedlings can't be planted: although it rained a little later, it "continued to scorch the sun." Even the replanted Zhuanghe mostly died; In that year, the province's harvest was halved. In some places, there is no grain harvest. As a result, hordes of hungry people merged into four people fleeing from the famine.
this year, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Liaoning and other provinces in the north were also threatened by drought. Shaanxi is dry all year round, with poor harvest in summer and autumn, and most places can't grow in winter and spring. Due to the severe drought in Shanxi, the harvest of autumn grain is poor. Jiexiu, Pingyao and other counties have almost no grain harvest. In Fengtian Yizhou (now Yixian County, Liaoning Province), there were as many as 1, hungry households because of the drought and no rain, and the vast number of farmers struggled painfully in hunger.
After nearly two years of drought, the disaster situation in most parts of North China reached an unprecedented state in the year of Ding Chou (1877), especially in Shanxi Province. Ceng Guoquan, the governor of Shanxi Province, said in the memorial that the disaster area was "more than a thousand miles away in bare land, and the number of hungry people reached five or six million, which was unprecedented in ancient times" ("Zeng Zhongxiang Memorial", Volume 8). The devastating drought has caused a long-term and large-scale reduction in production and no harvest in rural areas of Shanxi. The famine for two years in a row has made farmers' stocks empty and pushed more and more victims to the brink of death. Hungry victims are dying for the sake of "Gou Ting's breath". , or "take pebbles and grind them into flour for food" or "dig up white mud to satisfy hunger". As a result, "in a few days, the mud swelled, and the abdomen was broken and destroyed, and it was mutually assured destruction. . (Shen Bao on June 3, 1877).
With the development of drought and the exhaustion of edible things, the tragedy of "cannibalism" occurred. In the winter of the third year of the drought (1877), in Shanxi, the hardest hit area, there was cannibalism everywhere. People who eat and sell human flesh are everywhere. Some people eat dead human flesh, while others kill old people or children alive ... The ruthless drought demon has turned the disaster area into a hell on earth!
The disaster situation in Henan is similar to that in Shanxi. After two consecutive years of early morning, the rich Zhongzhou Plain has turned into a thousand miles of bare land. In that year, the newspaper Shen Bao published a message saying that there were "more than 5 counties with poor harvests and 28 counties with complete famine" in Henan Province. However, Yuan Baoheng, the left assistant minister of the Ministry of Punishment, who was ordered to help with the relief work in Henan, arrived in Henan and announced that there were 87 counties and counties in the province with five or six million hungry people.
The shadow of drought also hangs over the whole province of Shaanxi. The disaster situation in Dali, Chaoyi, Taiyang (now Hetian), Chengcheng, Hancheng, Baishui and nearby counties. Extremely heavy and miserable. " Desperate hungry people are desperate to take risks, gathering people for guns and food, and some even "stop roads and correct looting, and write the words' it is difficult to commit crimes and hunger'" (Shen Bao on October 3, 1877).
A once-in-a-century drought has also occurred in eastern Gansu and northern Sichuan. "Nanjiang County Records" recorded the drought in northern Sichuan in detail: "Ding Chou was old, and the north of Sichuan was also dry, especially in the three counties of Ba (Zhong), Nan (Jiang) and Tong (Jiang) ... Hundreds of miles of bare land, rice seedlings burned, and the price of rice soared day by day, while the poor people suffered from lack of food: vegetable bran was exhausted. Those who take doves and throw rocks into streams to despise their bodies are heard in the wild every day. Father abandoned him, brother abandoned his brother, husband abandoned his wife, crying on the road ... It's winter and the following spring, or the whole family dies quietly. Adults eat each other, and there are more than tens of thousands of corpses. "
This year, Zhili and northwestern Shandong, including Jingshi, as well as parts of Jiangsu and Anhui, still suffered serious droughts. Take Zhili County as an example, there are more than two million victims in Hejian alone. In the year of famine and social unrest, many victims took risks to survive. In Wuqiang county, there is a "machete meeting" composed of victims; In Bazhou, Tongzhou and other places, many victims organized armed forces to fight for grain.
by the beginning of 1878, drought continued in most parts of the north. Since the spring in Zhixia, the drought has not been alleviated; There was a short rainy period in June, and then there was a continuous drought until July of the following year. However, judging from the whole disaster area, the drought began to ease, and the drought in Shaanxi, Shandong, Henan, Zhili and other provinces tended to ease. However, after three consecutive years of severe drought, the people's tolerance for natural disasters is close to the limit, and all kinds of human tragedies caused by drought have not decreased correspondingly because of the relief of drought, but have become more and more serious. In Shanxi, more and more villages and families were destroyed by natural disasters. In Henan, most of the hungry people who survived by luck are dying. "There is no meat to eat, and there is no power to cut people." Some victims who still have breath are hungry dogs after falling to the ground. In Hejian Prefecture of Zhili, some hungry people in their prime "fell to the ground while receiving relief." At the turn of spring and summer this year, a large-scale plague hit the disaster area. Almost ten people in Henan province are ill, and in Shaanxi province, "after the disaster, the plague and the road are facing each other;" Twenty-three out of ten people in Shanxi province died of the epidemic.
In the fifth year of Guangxu (1879), although the drought in Shanxi Province is still the same, after all, the rain has fallen on the vast land from Zhilu in the east to Shaanxi and Gansu in the west, and the dry river bed has rippled again, and the cracked land has begun to moisten and become green again. The drought has come to an end, and the years of suffering are coming to an end. However, just as the people who survived were preparing to rebuild their homes, a new disaster suddenly came. This was a big earthquake with a magnitude of 8 and an intensity of 11 degrees in Wudu, Gansu Province on July 1. Most of the areas damaged or affected by the earthquake are in the drought-stricken areas.
Plague and earthquake pushed the "Ding Wu Qi Famine" to a terrible situation! According to incomplete statistics, from 1876 to 1878, there were 222 counties, 42 counties and 331 counties suffering from drought in Shandong, Shanxi, Zhili, Henan and Shaanxi provinces respectively. The number of residents severely affected by drought and famine in the whole disaster area is estimated to be around 16 million to 2 million, accounting for about half of the national population at that time; The number of people who died directly from famine and plague is around 1 thousand; No fewer than 2 million people have fled from the hardest hit areas (see Ten Famines in Modern China by Li Wenmei and others).
The catastrophic drought in the late Qing Dynasty was a catastrophe in the history of the Chinese nation! When Qing officials mentioned this drought, they called it a "sad and unheard-of grief at the end of more than 23 years" in the Qing dynasty, saying it was. The "great □ strange disaster" only seen in ancient times. Looking back on this natural disaster today, it is still creepy. However, we are not satisfied with the narrative of this natural disaster. Besides lamenting, we need to think deeply.