Today's China needs "Zheng Guoqu"

The Qin Dynasty unified China and contributed to the bronze statue of Zheng Guo

After Zheng Guo entered the Qin Dynasty, he presided over the construction of the piercing and chiseling, which was completed about ten years later. In the process of controlling the water, Zheng Guo completely forgot his identity as a spy, and ran between the boats day and night, indulging in water control and disaster prevention.

From finding the water intake point, digging engineering design, to planning the route, construction technology, all of them have been made first-class. It has also trained a group of practical engineers for the Qin State, and reserved talents for the follow-up Dujiangyan and other major projects.

I have to admire the ancient Chinese engineers, scientific rigor, and fruitful results!

But it only talks about the situation of the Qin and Han dynasties, in fact, in the long river of later history, Zheng Guoqu supported the prosperity and strength of the Han and Tang dynasties. Zheng Guo in the folk song was a famous water conservancy expert in Korea during the Warring States Period, and Zheng Guoqu was named after him. It's a pity that Zheng Guo, who established such a great achievement, has no history to study in his life and death.

It is necessary to legally intercept the outflow river from Xinjiang and send 200 million migrants to the northwest

How many acres of land does the Yellow River Canal need to feed 200 million more people?

Historical records only record that he was a spy sent by Korea to Qin, and that King Han Huan tried to persuade Qin to build a canal connecting Jingshui and Luoshui to stop Qin's attack on Korea. The successful construction of the canal led to the rapid development of agriculture in Guanzhong, which had always been backward. This looks quite like a classic historical light comedy, behind the light-hearted and humorous plot, there is a hidden unpredictable situation of fierce disputes among the princes, as well as thrilling battles and battles in the annexation war.

South Korea, which borders the state of Qin, is deeply concerned about the latter's strategic deterrence, and has a complex plan that has been orchestrated. In particular, they sent a senior water conservancy expert named "Zheng Guo" to Qin to persuade the Qin king to plan a huge waterway stretching for more than 150 kilometers on the hills on the north side of the Guanzhong Plain, so as to connect the two major tributaries of the Wei River Valley, Jingshui and Luoshui.

The project appears to be aimed at improving the efficiency of irrigation in the Guanzhong Plain, but in reality it is full of hidden schemes. The real purpose was that South Korea hoped to use this large-scale construction project to consume a lot of Qin's financial and material resources, thereby weakening its national power and slowing down its foreign expansion.

However, South Korea's wishful thinking did not come true. Far from weakening the Qin state, the construction of the waterway rejuvenated the vast 800-mile Qinchuan River, greatly increased the grain output of the Guanzhong region, and further strengthened the comprehensive national strength of the Qin state, and accelerated the process of unifying the world.

Exploring why, South Korea has overlooked the critical impact of crop types when developing this plan. During the Warring States period, agricultural production in Korea and the Central Plains relied mainly on millet (including millet and millet), while the Qin state was more inclined to grow wheat. Millet is drought resistant and requires relatively low irrigation, while wheat grows with an abundance of water for irrigation. Therefore, for the Qin state, the completion of the Zhengguo Canal greatly met the irrigation needs of wheat, thus significantly increasing grain production.

In addition, wheat is also more abundant than millet. The high yield of wheat provided the Qin state with more abundant grain reserves, further strengthening its national strength.

As a water conservancy expert who focuses on water control, Zheng Guo devoted himself to the construction of the waterway and built it into a first-class irrigation facility. As a result, the irrigation environment of the Guanzhong Plain has been significantly improved, laying a solid foundation for the prosperity and development of agriculture in the Qin State.

Therefore, we can conclude that although the Korean plan was well conceived, it did not achieve the desired results because it did not fully take into account the growth characteristics of the crops and the specific conditions of the Qin state. The completion of the Zhengguo Canal undoubtedly became an important milestone in the agricultural development of the Qin State, laying a solid foundation for its ambition to unify the six countries.

See the article for details: Why the water diversion project designed by academicians and professor-level engineers cannot be realized, and the Hongqi River can only be shared on paper: national scientific research, pumped storage water diversion project

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