The Control Of The Coincident Of The River And The Canal In Ming Dynasty

The transporting movement for grain in the south to the Beijing City was becomingregularly till the end of the Ming Dynasty since the emperor Di Zhu moving the capital toBeijing. From then on, the political center separated from the economic center. It hadimportant meanings for the controlling of the Ming Dynasty. But with the yellow riverbecoming a part of the great canal, the disaster caused by the yellow river affected the bigtransporting inevitable. The article is on account of the relation of the yellow river and thecanal, searching the improvement for the coincident part between the yellow river and thecanal. But the relation complicated and changeful, the guiding principles had to change.“Leading the yellow river’s water to the canal”,“making the yellow river as a part of thecanal”,“avoiding the yellow river for a part of the canal” are the three ideologies for using theyellow river running through the Ming Dynasty, but the policy that protecting the canal wasthe purpose for controlling the yellow river didn’t change in the Ming Dynasty. Protecting thecanal was the primary thing during the process, because the great transporting movement wasthe economic lifeline of the Ming Dynasty. The yellow river had so many sands and wasfamous for its breaking, silting up and migrating frequently that made it becoming the mostuncontrolled river in the Chinese history, and entering into the Ming it become more serious.The geography of the coincident part between the yellow river and the canal was singular, theboats from the south to north without a hitch had to draw support from the floodgates, damsand manpower’s towing. With the addition danger of the flood Xuzhou and LvLiang, thecontrolling difficulty increased.In the early days of Ming Dynasty, the main administering were drawing the yellowriver‘s water to the canal, preventing disaster caused by overflow of the River, and keepingenough depth and width of the flood Xuzhou and LvLiang. Besides, recruiting local peoplewho lived nearby in charge of pulling and navigation to make sure transit successfully. AndJiXun Pan’s practice of controlling the sands. The early days controlling demonstrated that nomatter leading the yellow river’s water to the canal or making the yellow river as a part of thecanal, there were no good result. So the voice of avoiding the yellow river for a part of thecanal was rising. You Zhen Xu proposed to grow grain around the capital to lighten thepressure of the great transporting in the early days of the Ming, the voice of ocean shippingdidn’t disappear either. But all of these were not put into effect for some reasons. In the period of JiaJing emperor, ShiNing Hu proposed to open up new canal for the first time to avoid theRiver’s invading, so there were new canal of Nan Yang and Jia River. When the Jia canaldredged, the great canal avoided the River for three hundreds meters and the danger of theflood Xuzhou and LvLiang, which eliminating the biggest hidden trouble in the greattransporting. From then on, the coincident part between the yellow river and the canal wasonly180meters from SuQian to QingKou. Till the1688, FuJin began to dredge the middlecanal, the yellow river separated from the great canal absolutely except Qing Kou.