Most of the prosperous times in ancient China have a characteristic, that is, grain is extremely abundant, the so-called "people take food as the sky", for ancient people, food and clothing is the most important thing in life. And a dynasty that can be called prosperous must be abundant in grain, such as the famous "Kaiyuan Prosperous Era" is "rice fat corn white public and private warehouses are abundant", that is to say, public and private granaries are very rich.
The same is true of the "rule of Zhenguan" before the "Kaiyuan Prosperous Era", but we must note that there is a detail here, when Tang Taizong Li Shimin began the rule of Zhenguan, the world had already suffered many years of war, in fact, the grain was already in the situation of many years of poor harvest, why did zhenguan still have such abundant grain during the zhenguan years? The answer is also very simple, that is, left over from the Sui Dynasty.
According to the historical records, "The Sui warehouse overflowed ... Compared with the last year, counting the world's reserves, it is necessary to supply fifty or sixty years", that is to say, the warehouses of the Sui Dynasty were piled up into mountains, and the grain piled up had overflowed into the warehouses, and by the end of the Sui Dynasty, even if it was used to supply the people all over the world, it could also support fifty or sixty years, which showed how rich the grain accumulation of the Sui Dynasty was, and how much the Sui Dynasty attached importance to the accumulation of materials.
The fact that grain could be accumulated to this extent was certainly related to the Importance of Hoarding in the Sui Dynasty, but also related to the great talent of Yang Jian, the Emperor of Sui Wen. Before Yang Jian established the unified Sui Dynasty, China had already fallen into a long period of division between the six kingdoms of the Two Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and because of Yang Jian's great talent, he successfully unified China in 589 AD, ending the division of the whole country.
Yang Jian was not only militarily brilliant, but also exerted great efforts to govern the national economy and the people's livelihood, creating a prosperous and prosperous era of "the rule of the emperor" and presenting a situation in which the country was strong and the people were prosperous and prosperous. Not only is the national strength extremely strong, so that the powerful nomadic Turks in the north do not dare to invade the frontier, but bow down to the subject, honoring Yang Jian as the "Heavenly Holy Khan", and the Turkic Qimin Khan said from the heart: "Dyed dry like dead wood and more leaves, dry bones and more flesh, thousands of generations, often Sui Dian sheep and horses." ”
That is to say, no matter when, even after thousands of years, the Turks are still willing to be the cattle and horses of the Sui Dynasty, which shows how powerful the Sui Dynasty under Yang Jian was at that time, and how rich was such a powerful Sui Dynasty? We already know that its grain is very rich, but in fact, the Sui Dynasty was rich not only grain, but also had a very high reserve of silver money, which is enough to illustrate by a typical example.
It was in the twelfth year of the kai emperor (592), when Hubu Shangshu, who was in charge of fiscal taxation and population at that time, wrote to Yang Jian because of difficulties in his work: "The house is full of treasures, there is nothing to spare, and it is accumulated in the gallery. That is to say, there is too much silver in the treasury, there is no place to fit, it can only be piled up on the corridor, so it is not good for a long time, so I ask the emperor to give a solution."
After listening to it, Yang Jian was also very puzzled, he would reduce taxes from time to time, and he often gave people rewards, how could he still have so much money? It turned out that because of the stable and peaceful social environment at that time, as well as the relaxed official conditions, the population grew on a large scale, and commercial agriculture also grew rapidly, resulting in a rapid rise in the total amount of the national economy, so although Yang Jian had tax relief, the country's wealth still increased significantly.
However, Yang Jian did not think that it was a good thing to accumulate these wealth in the national treasury, he said 8 words, which have been passed down to this day, that is, "it is better to accumulate in people than to have a Tibetan treasury", that is to say, it is better to distribute wealth to many people than accumulate in the treasury, which is the idea of "hiding rich for the people" in the early days of ancient China.