Since The Historical Period And Social Impacts Of Response Measures Hanjiang River Natural Disasters

The upstream region of Hanjiang River is a natural disaster prone area. This paper is based on the historical records of the upstream region of Hanjiang River about the various kinds of natural disasters-Floods, droughts, storm wind disaster, hail disaster, geological disasters, pests disaster, fierce freeze-up disaster and so on. This paper analyzed the characteristics and the causes of natural disasters; and the frequency and season characteristics of the various natural disasters in Hanjiang River upstream. In the history period, the disasters of Hanjiang River upstream region present the following characteristics:this area has a wide variety of natural disasters; drought and flood disasters is the most; disasters occurrence frequently; secondary disasters often happen, and have serious consequences. Since a long period of time in historical period, natural disaster is an important factor of social reproduction restricting in the Hanjiang River upstream region. The occurrence of natural disasters brought great influence to the Hanjiang River upstream region.First of all, the disaster affects the quality and quantity of the population of this region. Due to the reasons, such as traffic, location, history, the economic development of Hanjiang upstream region is slow. So, this region is a sparsely populated place. Disasters can cause massive death population, as well as the victims out migration, which cause a severely decrease and the frequently change of population. And the occurrence of famine will also inevitably lead to a decline of people’s life quality and physical quality.Secondly, disasters frequently occur in the region brings a lot of damage on social economy. Performance in these aspects:food production reduce precipitously; cultivated land fall into disuse because the lack of labor, production tools and materials, so, the cultivated reproduction recovery difficult; cultivated land abandoned lead to a heavily fall of the price and a seriously annexation of rural land, combined with rural usury prevailed in the years of famine, the rural economic is out of order; the arid farming lead a lack of raw materials in industrial and commercial economy area, with the victims of purchasing power decline in the year of disaster, industry and commerce economic development is slow, social economy is dying.Thirdly, the natural disasters make society out of order. No matter which kind of disaster happens, the most direct impact often is the lack of food, and lead to famine. When the years of serious famine happen in Hanjiang River upstream region, to survive, the people willing to sell the female member in the family, even eat family for their own survival, the traditional ethics moral is subjected to a hard hit; the frequent changes in population after famine to a certain extent, disturbs the social order, increasing the government’s management difficulties; when disasters happen, the victims often appear some behaviors like grabbing food, refusing to provide rent, robbing the riches, etc. And even more serious the victims will rise up and against the government.Fourthly, natural disasters occur frequently, while people in historical period lack of scientific understanding about the disasters, they don’t know the correct methods of treatment. So, the Hanjiang River upstream region appeared some peculiar customs about disasters resisting in Historical period. Such as, people will pray to immortals for rain and expel the Drought Ghost "Ba" after drought; people requst the hypothetical woman who can sweep away the clouds in the sky after the flood; people will worship, hope for the locuse god and the immortal who protects the farmland to expel the locuses; and the individual areas has the custom to getting away from a famine-stricken area every year when their grain is not enough, and go back whe the crops mature. As we konw, the formation of these customs is not scientific, but it also, to some extent, reflects the working people’s disaster relief thoughts, which formed in the case of long-term facing natural disasters.Finally, people fled to another place in order to survive when the diasters happen, and the government’s policy that encourage foreign victims immigrant to reclamed land bring a large amount of population flow, also promoted the cultural communication, in different areas. Such as, the spread of the customs, dialects, farming technology, etc.The disaster response by government and society in Hanjiang River upstream area, mainly displays in three aspects:(1) Disaster prevention before disaster is happen. Such as, build water conservancy project to defence the floods and droughts, people in this area create a large number of ancient weir and diversion channels in history; as early as The Three Kingdoms period the government in this area have measures to ban on deforestation, and the government paies more attention to these measures during Ming and qing dynasties; and the government have policy of grain storage in harvest year.(2) When disasters occur, the government and some folk group provide positive relief to the victims, such as, provide the relief fund, relief porridge, clothes, etc. When the grain price in the market is too high, the government will open warehouse to put grain to the market to reduce the grain price; the government will also make policy to reduce farmers’tax, land rent and so on, in order to reduce the burden on farmers.(3) After disasters, in order to encourage farmers to resume production, the government credit grain, cattle, tools to farmers with a low price; and even debt relief for victims; encourage farmers to lease farmland for production, called for the local refugees return home for disaster recovery in agricultural production, and attract foreign refugees to reclaimed land into the Hanjiang River upstream area, to reduce the land waste, and increase fiscal and tax revenue.