The form of rural settlements in ancient China has a long evolution process. The “Nineteen Ancient Poems” of the Han Dynasty described, “willows in the lush garden, cypresses on the green mausoleum”, and the Han Yuefu described it as “pines and cypresses are planted in the east and west, sycamores are planted in the left and right, the branches and branches are covered, and the leaves and leaves communicate with each other”.
In the Tang Dynasty, Meng Haoran’s “Passing the Old Man’s Village”, “Green trees close to the village, green hills and guo slant outside” and Du Fu’s “Huang Siniang’s house is full of flowers, thousands of flowers are pressed down on the branches”, became ancient villages. template.
Song Dynasty Countryside
In the early Tang Dynasty, the system of setting up village officials in rural settlements was implemented. Although the actual settlement names in various places in the past dynasties were still various, “village” has since become the most common name. After entering the Song Dynasty, with the increase of population, the number and scale of villages expanded further.
Turning to the Water Margin, the description of the village in the book is “the pastoral field, surrounded by green wisps of smoke, and greenery everywhere. The corners of the house are full of cattle and sheep, and the threshing field is full of geese and ducks…” If this is just literature The imaginary description of this sentence, then the quantitative vision of this sentence is “there is an earth wall all around, but there are two or three hundred big willow trees outside the wall”, which is very shocking.
In the villages of the Song Dynasty, scenes such as thatched eaves, shepherd boys, cooking smoke, geese calling, and crowing crows are depicted everywhere, as well as scenes surrounded by forests. Every village is “thatched eaves and streams, and ancient trees form forests.”
The willow dikes in the Song Dynasty looped back and forth, interspersed with distances and distances. The white clouds floating in the sky meet the distant woods in the misty mist. There are cruise ships moored on the shore, small boats on the water come and go, and wine flags are exposed on the willow branches nearby. It is so beautiful that only the Song Dynasty can experience it.
The government of the Song Dynasty paid special attention to agricultural production and rural construction, and agricultural development brought prosperity to the countryside. The most prominent manifestation was that the speed of rural urbanization was significantly faster than before.
Before the Song Dynasty, “towns” were mainly used for garrisoning troops. In the Song Dynasty, the number of military towns was gradually reduced, and the main function of “towns” was changed to rural commodity trading. In addition, a large number of “grass markets” appeared in the vast countryside. “, according to the statistics of the ninth year of Song Shenzong Xining (1076), there were 27,607 “grass markets” of various types in the country at that time.
into the countryside
The rural development and prosperity of the Song Dynasty led to the rise of tourism. On the one hand, the changes in the appearance of the countryside have provided “hardware conditions” for tourism. On the other hand, businessmen, officials, and wealthy urban and rural people have become the mainstay of tourism consumption. While visiting the bustling cities and famous mountains and rivers, they are also willing to go to the countryside. Promote the development of rural tourism.
According to statistics, nearly 500 poets of the Song Dynasty left pastoral poems, with a total of more than 4,000. These numbers are much higher than similar works of the previous dynasties. Before the Song Dynasty, Tao Yuanming and Wang Wei were considered to have written the best pastoral poems and wrote more poems.
There is also a special group of rural tourists in the Song Dynasty, that is, the scholars who took the exam. In the fourth year of Jingde (1007) of Emperor Zhenzong of Song Dynasty, there were 14,562 people from all over the country who came to the capital to take the exam. , The “rural tourism” promoted by this has almost become the norm. It is conceivable that they have also driven the prosperity of rural tourism.
Farmers work hard and hope to relax during the slack season. They are both organizers and participants of rural tourism. Su Shi wrote in the poem “He Zi Yu Silkworm Market”: “The food and clothing of the Shu people are often hard, and the people of Shu There is no return to entertainment. Thousands of people farm and ten thousand people eat, and one year of hard work and one spring leisure.” The development of agricultural production and the improvement of rural living conditions have made farmers interested and eager to travel.
Special tourism
When tourists go to the countryside, they naturally want to watch the farming. In the writings of poets in the Song Dynasty, almost all farming activities were written into poems, such as “go to hoe the beans in the south mountain, return to irrigate the melons in the east garden”, experience agricultural labor in person, “pick vegetables with a stick, and see no one on the swing”, or “The chrysanthemum is divided into Yangjia, and Teng Yan goes to Zaoying”, and the picking activities are carried out.
In spring, all kinds of flowers are in full bloom in the countryside. Seeing the business opportunities that planting flowers can bring, some villagers consciously plant a large number of flowers to attract tourists. Luoyang and other places are known for their peonies, and local peony fairs are also organized to enjoy and sell flowers.
Ouyang Xiu once recorded that at the flower fair, “Yao Huang has a joint, and it costs five thousand.” He said that the price of the rare peony variety “Yao Huang” is very expensive. Planting flowers, selling flowers, and even grafting new varieties have become part of the villagers’ attraction to tourists. The means to achieve wealth.
In the development of rural tourism, various places adapt measures to local conditions and introduce their own characteristics. Luoyang focuses on peonies, while the villages near Chengdu have developed activities such as “river tour” and “silkworm market”.
Chen Yuanliang from the Song Dynasty described it in “Sui Shi Guang Ji”: “Therefore, the women of the capital lived in parallel for eight or nine miles, and looked at it like a block. Arrived at the Baoli Temple Bridge, went out, and had a banquet in the temple. In front of the temple, there was a silkworm market. Let the people trade, play and have fun, twice as old as in the past, and return at dusk.”
In some places, activities such as “medicine fairs”, “temple fairs” and “Taoist fairs” were held. These activities of “tourism setting up a stage and economic performances” were not uncommon in the vast rural areas at that time.
In the rural tourism of the Song Dynasty, there were also popular recreational activities such as swinging, kite flying, and cockfighting. Among them, swinging was a “reserved activity” for cold food and outings before and after Qingming, and it was called “the play of half immortals”. Flying kites is also very popular, “ten thousand people look at Qingxiao together, and the sound of drums and flutes plays with colored balls”.
prosperous economy
Before the Song Dynasty, the main operator of the hotel industry was the government, which basically provided supporting services for the national post system. After the Song Dynasty, under the background of encouraging commercial activities and the prosperity of tourism, the private hotel industry began to flourish. Not only were there many hotels in big cities, but also hotels were opened everywhere in the vast villages.
In the poems and essays of the Song people, “village shop”, “wild shop”, “suburb shop”, “mountain shop” and “Ni Lu” can be seen everywhere. Folk”, showing the huge capacity of the country inn.
At that time, the hotel industry was already relatively mature, and the prices of many hotels were already linked to the off-season and peak season of tourism. During the peak tourist season or the imperial examination period, “although a room with one bed, the rent is no less than tens of chu”. Qianjiang Tide in Lin’an is a famous tourist attraction. When you go to watch the tide, “every food and drink is always as good as the sky.” At that time, most people who watch the tide live in the surrounding villages, and the hotel expenses are naturally doubled compared with usual times.
Rural tourism is not only driving the hotel industry. Some people see the business opportunities brought by rural tourism, so they invest in the construction of private gardens for people to visit. Similar to the current parks, the owners of the gardens earn profits by charging “tea soup money”.
The development of rural tourism has absorbed a large number of laborers, and the tourism industry and related hotel, catering, planting, and transportation industries have all benefited from it, further prospering the rural economy and increasing tax revenue for the court.
In the ninth year of Song Shenzong Xining (1076), “grass markets” all over the country increased commercial taxes for the court by more than 4.2 million guan, accounting for about 10% of the country’s total fiscal revenue at that time. The Song Dynasty is known as the “richest dynasty”, and the prosperous rural tourism industry has made no small contribution to it.
Source: Landlord Forum
All pictures and texts belong to the original author
