The Rise of the Writers of the Republic of China

After Zhou Hexuan and Yin Changling left, Liu Xiang asked Gan Jiyong: "Your expression was a bit wrong earlier. What did you want to say?"

Gan Jiyong took out a large pile of documents from his wallet and said with a grimace: "There were two outsiders here just now. It's hard to say something in person. Commander, please read these documents first."

Liu Xiang first turned to a summary of the disaster report, and saw what it said: Since this spring, there has been a long drought and no rain in all parts of Sichuan. The fields are cracked, people die of hunger, food is exhausted, and dead bodies are stolen and eaten. A total of 125 counties, 3 villages and 1 bureaus in the province were affected by the disaster. Except for the counties in the Chengdu Plain, all other places were disaster areas, with more than 37 million people affected..."

During the Republic of China, there were two main sources for Sichuan population statistics, one was customs data and the other was postal data.

There is a huge difference between these two data, which are more than 70 million and more than 40 million respectively. The actual population of Sichuan should be around 50 million (including Xikang and Chongqing). The 37 million people affected by the disaster accounted for 70% of the total population of Sichuan.

According to the "Sichuan Rural Economy" published by the Commercial Press at the beginning of the year: "(Since 1928 to the present), Sichuan has suffered from disasters year after year, and the deserted areas are increasingly expanding." In other words, Sichuan has suffered from eight consecutive years of major disasters. Earthquakes, floods, droughts, winds, hailstorms, locusts, all taking turns in different ways.

Coupled with more than 20 years of continuous warlord fighting, Sichuan's population barely increased from the late Qing Dynasty to the full-scale Anti-Japanese War. It was not until Liu Xiang unified Sichuan that the population grew rapidly in the past two or three years. As a result, Sichuan is now experiencing a large-scale drought.

Liu Xiang was not very clear about the disaster situation before, thinking that it was only serious in northwest Sichuan. After briefly reading through the disaster report, he finally turned gloomy, sighed and asked, "How many people have starved to death?"

Gan Jiyong answered cautiously: "It's difficult to make accurate statistics. Not only the disasters in northwest Sichuan, but also in northern and northeastern Sichuan are becoming more and more serious."

Liu Xiang casually pulled out a Xuanhan County disaster report, and saw that it read: Starvation is everywhere in this county...According to the statistics of the previous 20 days, more than 10 people died of hunger in each day, and the number has gradually increased in recent years. About 20 people.

Liu Xiang opened the report of Wanyuan County again: Now the population of Wanyuan has dropped by one-third... There are only a few thousand people in Wanyuan City. For example, if you travel a long distance, you will hardly see smoke from cooking stoves all day long, and people will die of starvation along the way, with few places to live.

Liu Xiang looked at the report from Nanjiang County: the total number of people dying of starvation in urban and rural areas reached more than a thousand people every day... Since February 1, no less than 80,000 people have died of starvation in this county.

Liu Xiang was horrified when he saw the data one by one. He asked with a mix of horror and anger: "So many people have starved to death. How do you become the director of the Civil Affairs Department?"

Gan Jiyong complained: "God is blind, what can I do? Sichuan is hit by disasters every year, and it has to develop internal affairs. The money of the Civil Affairs Department is simply not enough. Until now, I have only managed to get 100,000 yuan. Where can I save it?" There are so many people."

Liu Xiang remained silent.

The Sichuan Provincial Government's money has been used to build roads in recent years. The Sichuan-Guizhou Highway was just completed last year, and now it is also building the Sichuan-Hunan, Sichuan-Hubei and Sichuan-Shaanxi highways. Just these few roads can wipe out Liu Xiang's wealth, because the road to Shu is too difficult, full of mountains and hills, and the cost of road construction is sometimes more than ten times that of plain areas. Even if there are private financing and business partnership, Liu Xiang and the provincial government will still have to spend money.

Gan Jiyong suddenly said: "A few days ago, Mr. Huang Yanpei, the Central Senator, came to Sichuan for an inspection. He passed by Jianyang County and saw people dying of hunger everywhere. He asked me, Jianyang is a model county of the New Life Movement, why are there so many people dying of hunger in the streets? ?As for no one collecting the bodies!”

"What! Are people starving to death in Jianyang?" Liu Xiang was shocked.

The disaster reports I saw earlier all came from the impoverished northern, northwest and northeastern Sichuan. Those areas reported disasters and died every year, and Liu Xiang had become numb to them. But Jianyang County is different. Jianyang is right next to the Sichuan Provincial Government and is also a model county for Chiang Kai-shek's New Life Movement!

Zhou Hexuan passed through Jianyang on this trip, but in order to rush for time, he did not go into the city to have a look, otherwise he would have seen many corpses lying on the road.

Gan Jiyong explained: "Jianyang has been hit by disasters for four consecutive years. People's lives are already hard, and they still hope to harvest more food this year to fill their bellies. As a result, the summer grain harvest has failed again, and food prices have soared. How can ordinary people still have food at home? ?”

Liu Xiang had a splitting headache after hearing this. He slumped back on his chair and murmured: "Many people have starved to death. How can I, the chairman of Sichuan Province, have the honor to see the elders in my hometown?"

Liu Xiang flipped through the report with blank eyes, and there was another one from Nanchuan County: Resident Xiong Dahu brought back two tanks of soju. The bottom of the tank cracked and the wine flowed all over the floor. Hungry people nearby flocked to eat and drink all the wine and mud. The hungry people, who were already dying of hunger, immediately died of drunkenness and lay horizontally and vertically on a large dam. The number of dead was 48.

This kind of drunken death method is already very rare. At least it doesn't starve to death, which is called suffering.

"Where is the central government's disaster relief food?" Liu Xiang asked, holding his forehead.

Gan Jiyong shook his head and said: "We haven't seen him yet. Only Huang Yanpei from the Central Senate came, but it was not for disaster relief. Now he has left Sichuan via Jiange to Luoyang. He wrote a lot of good poems along the way."

"Mom sells batches!"

Liu Xiang suddenly grabbed the disaster report and threw it on the ground. He cursed loudly and said: "Brother Ge, hurry up and provide relief. If you don't have money, go to the bank to borrow money. Also, anyone who hoards and speculates on food prices will be given a serious warning. Anyone who disobeys again will be arrested by me." Shot!"

"I humbly obey my orders!" Gan Jiyong quickly stood at attention and saluted the military salute.

After sending Gan Jiyong away, Liu Xiang asked his adjutant to send a telegram to Lu Zuofu, and mobilized all the ships and boats of the Minsheng Company to go to Shanghai at any time to meet Zhou Hexuan's shipment of grain from the United States. As for shipping costs, Liu Xiang mentioned the cost price before, but now he doesn’t mention the money at all.

The entire northern Sichuan is now severely affected by the disaster. Liu Xiang has no choice but to provide some symbolic relief, and the rest can only be left to fate. But eastern Sichuan, southern Sichuan and central Sichuan must go all out to rescue, otherwise something big will happen in Sichuan, and someone might even start a rebellion.

In fact, by the time the famine was at its worst in the spring of 1937, Sichuan was in complete chaos. It is normal to kill officials and give food to the rich. The most terrifying thing is the boxing bandits. The demons and ghosts come out and gather people to cause trouble under the guise of gods descending from the earth. Many innocent people suffer.

Under Liu Xiang's order, various departments of the Sichuan Army quickly mobilized. The main purpose was not to provide disaster relief, but to suppress possible rebellions.

Gan Jiyong went to major banks every day, begging his father and grandma to raise disaster relief funds. In the end, he got 1.6 million oceans for his life and death. Sichuan was really poor, the government was poor, the people were poor, and only those in the opium trade were the richest. Liu Xiang had to increase the "anti-smoking tax" again.

As for stabilizing food prices, administrative orders alone cannot suppress them. Only when Zhou Hexuan's disaster relief food arrives can some relief be achieved.

Now the disaster has spread from northwest Sichuan to northern and northeastern Sichuan. Other places are more serious in some cases, but generally they can still be sustained. If there can be a few rains in autumn and crops such as sweet potatoes and wheat are harvested, millions of people will not starve to death.

But God is deliberately trying to make things difficult for Sichuan. No one could have predicted that the drought in Sichuan will continue for more than half a year.