Sailing against the current in a fast-flowing or shallow river, working people climb over the river bank and pull fibers to help the ship move.
People engaged in this kind of hard work were called "trackers" in later generations and "trackers" in Song Dynasty.
Lvliang in Xuzhou and Liang Hong in Baibu are "shallow risks, but too many boats". The strength to pull the fiber is doubled, and the return will naturally increase.
However, in the works of feudal historians, it is compared with cattle and donkeys. Sichuan, Hunan, Fujian, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Shanxi and other provinces have also been "stalkers" in history.
Because they are lowly people, their real life will naturally go unnoticed and will not be recorded.
However, after the Song Dynasty, there were many reflections on the situation of "stalkers" in some excellent ancient modern poems.
At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Sun Yan, a poet from Shunde, Guangdong Province, went to Sichuan on business.
Traveling in Qutang Gorge between fengjie county and Wushan County, opposing Jiang Shangxing.
He experienced the storm and sang the famous seven-character ancient poem "Xiaqutang".
There are dozens of "trackers" mentioned in the poem, pulling long ropes, climbing the cliff and marching along the shore: "Strive to lead a hundred feet to the rock valley, and walk like apes on both sides."
Although the poet only sketched the scene of pulling optical fiber, it is not difficult to imagine the hardships of "trackers" climbing high and low and carrying heavy loads.
Wang Ruxiang, a poet in the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, also wrote "The Tracker" by Huangniuxia, one of the Three Gorges in Sichuan.
He said that the Three Gorges is a miracle of the world, and the "yellow cattle" are particularly dangerous.
In the rushing river, wooden boats pass through the cracks in the rocks, and the waves sound like thunder, touching the rocks and constantly stirring up snow-like waves.
The tracker moves like an ant. When their hands relaxed a little, the boat fell backwards and the long pole in the stern pole was broken many times.
The thrilling scene made him feel that he was an official in Sichuan (according to Wang, he was the magistrate of Tongjiang County, Sichuan Province). What a stupid plan!
There are three representative works describing the prosperous Sichuan "trackers" during the Qianlong period.
"Twelve Bays" describes that when the wooden boat is about to arrive at Qutang Gorge, the "tracker" climbs the steep mountain wall and struggles forward. "Empty Valley" means that the mountains on the river bank go straight into the sky, and the strong wind in the river stirs up huge waves, making the sound of Malik galloping.
The "tracker" struggled to pull the boat, and after ten steps, it was necessary to retreat nine steps.
A little careless, the ship is in danger of hitting the rocks and sinking; "Crossing the Beach" said that the "trackers" were walking arm in arm in the mountains, and the boats were beating gongs and drums to "cheer for them".
But the countercurrent impulse is too great, and it takes a lot of effort to take a step forward.
The "tracker" climbed the cliff with difficulty, bent down to pull the optical fiber, and the broken hat on his head and shoes on his feet often fell to the ground.
Their wives and children also came to help pull the boat.
If one of the ropes suddenly breaks, everyone will miss.
If you can't pull the boat, it will retreat and often hit the rocks and sink.
In such a dangerous situation, the poet sighed and said, "Send a message to fame and fortune, don't be a long-distance traveler!" " "
At first, the "tracker" appeared as an "individual worker". With the passage of time and the needs of the feudal ruling class, it once became a heavy labor that the working people were forced to bear.
Shi, a famous poet in the early Qing Dynasty, wrote a Yuefu poem "Leading the Boatman".
This paper describes the tragic situation of the "tracker" in the 18th beach of Ganjiang, Jiangxi.
Because the "soldiers from the north" (referring to the Qing army who went south after entering the customs) marched by boat, coastal counties were ordered to recruit civilian workers as "trackers" to pull boats.
Wan 'an, Ganxian and other magistrate of a county did not dare to follow suit, so they immediately transferred a large number of civilian workers and detained them in the ancient temple by the river, waiting for the arrival of the army.
They are barefoot, wearing short coats, bringing their own cold meals and swallowing them with the river.
When you are marching, you are often considered lazy and beaten.
Some people were so tired that they fell dead by the river that their companions dared not cry.
Finally, Shi sighed with emotion: "How many people have shed blood since I went to South Guangdong?
The rope was cut constantly, the running water was ruthless, and there was no whimper! "He witnessed the horrors of the Qing army's conscription and abuse of working people, and it was inconvenient to express his feelings. So he first recruited civilian workers to engage in boat-pulling, which was recognized as the beginning of Fu Bo general Ma Yuan's southern expedition in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty to show his deep sympathy for the "boatmen".
Later, Wang Shouhong, a poet in the south of the Yangtze River, described the situation of the "tracker" in western Fujian in his poem Jiujiang Beach.
On the day before Shenzhou 10 arrived at Kowloon Beach, a dangerous beach, seven ships hit the rocks and two sank.
In order to ensure safety, we had to "split the long rope", and the boatman grabbed the shore with fibers, leaving only the old people to hold the pole.
In the sinister environment of "a pool is hanging one foot high, thunder and rain are raging, the stern is upside down, and the boulder is prevented from confronting", "it is ready to come out" and go all out.
Zhang Lucheng, a Yunnan poet in the Qianlong period, wrote a poem "Pulling a Boatman", which vividly described the scene of "trackers" dancing on the water in Zhenyuan, Guizhou.
On a rugged mountain road with peaks on both sides, the number of "trackers" depends on the size of the ship.
They can't look at each other, they can't turn their bodies, their hands touch the ground and their hips are facing the sky. "The head is not fully advanced, and the postscript is late."
On a hot day, I was so tired that I was sweating like a pig.
Finally, Zhang said with emotion, if you didn't see the hard work of the "tracker" with your own eyes, you shouldn't have written such a poem as "struggling" without getting sick!
During the Daoguang period, Lv Yinggu, a former magistrate in Shuoping, Shanxi Province, also wrote several poems about "stalkers".
When he was swimming in Hunan, Hunan, he wrote "Trailer Journey", which reflected that the trailer was like a crab crawling on the beach, and a dragging beast hobbled along. "It's no good pulling the cable to the beach and sweating."
"At that time, it was the hot summer season, and the senior officials on board waved fans and ate fresh fruits to quench their thirst. They don't sympathize with the hard work of the "tracker" and scold them for not working hard!
In Sanggan River, Shanxi Province, Lv Yinggu also came into contact with "stalkers": farmers were forced to pull boats, government officials pulled them door to door, "chickens flying in the house and dogs barking outside the kitchen", and finally some underage teenagers and old people were pulled to serve.
"The north wind blows cold and millet, and the tracker is sweating like a pig. If you want to stop, you must not be afraid of whipping and panting! " Finally, the poet asked angrily, "Why are you so tired?"
All of the above are situations in which "trackers" are used when sailing. Stranger still, some officials use "trackers!" When sitting in a sedan chair. In mountainous Yunnan, officials travel by sedan chair, which is slow to climb the mountain, so they came up with a way to tie a rope to the sedan chair and help the tracker pull it.
In his masterpiece Yunnan Department, a normal scholar in central Yunnan between Gansu and Jiaqing talked about the service of tax collectors in Ming and Qing Dynasties, saying that the hardest work of working people was "thin sedan chair".
Every time you take the official sedan chair, many people use 24 "trackers", at least 12.
They are like fiber boats, "rushing to steep peaks, sweating like rain and panting like thunder."
Stone sighed and said; "Who is not a child, but endured abuse to do it!"
The existence of "tracker" reflects the reality of backward traffic in old China.
Some of them were forced to pull boats and work for free; There are also desperate poor people as a means of making a living.
In the 1940s, people who lived in Jiang Bin, Sichuan in the middle of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression would have some understanding and feelings about the hard life of "tracker".