After the eighth lunar month, the pace of "going home" is getting closer and closer. I recall Dai Shulun, a poet from Jintan District, Runzhou, Jiangsu Province (now in Jintan District, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province) in the Tang Dynasty, who asked about the hotel? The cold light is unique. At the end of the year, thousands of miles of people have not returned home. It is inevitable that people who were officials and businessmen in different places in ancient times were "anxious" and "worried" on their way home.

This poem was written by Dai Shulun on New Year's Eve when he was governor of Fuzhou. At that time, he was forced to stay in Shitouyi (located on the west bank of Ganjiang River in the new district of Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province). It was only 700 kilometers from Fuzhou to Changzhou. A local senior official could not go home to reunite with his relatives even if he hurried slowly, which gave people a heavy sense of depression and endless bitter taste, and even more highlighted the poet's lonely and cold feelings of homesickness and missing his relatives.

Similarly, Xue Daoheng, a literary leader of the Sui Dynasty and a poet from Shanxi, was "trapped" on the way because he could not catch up with his family. "It was only seven days in spring, and it has been two years since he left home. When people returned to the wild goose, they thought about their hair in front of flowers.". The Sui and Tang Jiahua written by Liu You of Tang Dynasty says: "Xue Daoheng hired Chen to write the poem" Man Day ". The poem implicitly and tactfully expresses the author's eagerness to think about returning and reuniting with his family. Gao Shi, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, also stayed in a hotel on New Year's Eve: "When the hotel is cold and the lights stay up alone, why do you feel so sad? Hometown is missing thousands of miles tonight, and another year will come in the future." Cui Tu, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, became a "lonely stranger" on New Year's Eve when he "held himself in danger".

Although the ancients "moved carefully" and stressed that "parents do not travel far", commercial activities can only rely on two legs, or horses (cows), carts, boats and boats without planes, cars and other fast means of transportation. Therefore, it is said that the Yellow Emperor, the first ancestor of China, "ordered the Vertical Sea Passage Road" and built vehicles with "the crossbar as the porch and the straight wood as the shaft". The Records of the Historian · Xia Ben Ji said that Dayu "rode on land by car, on water by boat, on mud by sled, and on mountain by boat". The ancestors of Shang Tang "took the bull and rode the horse" and conducted business from a long distance, opening up the history of taking animal power as the driving force of transportation. The rulers of the Western Zhou Dynasty constantly strengthened the construction of transportation infrastructure and ancillary service facilities. The Book of Songs · Dadong said: "The road of the Zhou Dynasty is as straight as a stone. A gentleman will walk on it, and a villain will look at it. If you care about it, you will weep." The Book of Rites · Local Officials · Legacy said: "Where there is a road between the country and the wild, there is a house within ten miles, where there is food and drink; where there is a shelter within thirty miles, there is a road room, where there is a committee; There is a city within fifty miles, a waiting hall within the city, and a waiting hall with a plot. " The technical level of the roads in the Western Zhou Dynasty is divided into five levels, namely, road, road, road, road and path. The "road" contains three tracks, the "road" contains two tracks, the "road" contains one track, the "road" uses ox cart, and the "path" is a field path.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the State of Qin and later the Qin Dynasty witnessed a rapid development of highway transportation. In order to open the Sichuan Shaanxi channel, King Huiwang of Qin built the famous "Baoxie Road", which is more than 200 kilometers long. This plank road is made by drilling holes and erecting wooden planks on the steep rock cliffs, and has successively built such plank roads as Jinniu Road, Ziwu Road and Tangluo Road. After Qin Shihuang unified China, according to the requirements of "cars on the same track", it took ten years to build a galloway that led to the whole country with Xianyang as the capital. The Book of the Han Dynasty: Biography of Jia Shan said: "In order to drive the road in the world, the east is poor, Yan Qi is poor, Wu and Chu are in the South Pole, and the view of the lake is complete. The road is fifty steps wide, three zhang long and the tree is thick, hidden with golden cones, and the tree is green pines."

From 212 BC to 210 BC, the First Emperor of Qin ordered the construction of a 1400 km long straight road through 14 counties and finally Jiuyuan County (now Baotou City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). In addition to Chi Dao and Zhi Dao, the Qin Dynasty also built "Wuchi Dao" in the southwest mountain areas and "New Dao" in today's Hunan, Jiangxi and other places. These roads with different grades and characteristics form a road network with Xianyang as the center to reach the whole country. The Han Dynasty inherited the system of the Qin Dynasty and continued to expand and extend on the original roads of the Qin Dynasty, forming a traffic network radiating from the capital to all sides.

In ancient times, accelerating the construction of transportation infrastructure was not only the need of national defense, diplomacy, commerce and trade, but also to promote the mobility of officials and other personnel. The Qin Dynasty comprehensively strengthened the centralization of power, and the national power resources were distributed from top to bottom. The "top leaders" of prefectures and counties must "serve as officials from other places". In the Western Han Dynasty, in order to prevent the corruption of local officialdom and the local power from becoming powerful, the rulers allowed local officials who were "shepherds" to move from place to place all the year round, which gradually changed the concept of "being officials from place to place" from vague to clear, and stipulated the system of local officials' withdrawal from membership and the three-year rotation system.

The wheel of history marched to the Tang and Song dynasties. Every Spring Festival, the flow of family visits and commerce and trade was superimposed at a high level, making the ancient Spring Festival travel, which was difficult to travel, transport and economy, even more difficult. As a result, those who lost money in business and were forced to migrate to avoid natural disasters had to rely on their feet to drive home, while those who were released and officials who went out to do business, rich businessmen, etc. took chariots (sedan chairs), livestock (cattle, horses, donkeys, mules, etc.) cars, and later rickshaws to go home. It was the greatest happiness to get home before New Year's Eve.

In the Tang Dynasty, there was a unified pricing for commercial transportation, and the lowest and highest price limits were set. The Six Canons of the Tang Dynasty, Volume III, Shangshu Hubu said: "For a journey by land, 70 li for horses, 50 li for donkeys, and 30 li for cars. For a journey by water, 30 li for boats, 40 li for rivers, and 45 li for water; 40 li for empty boats, 50 li for rivers, and 60 li for water. The boat along the river is of the same weight... Henan, Hebei, Hedong, Guannei and other four states transport rent, mediocrity, sundries and other feet, each carrying 100 jin, 100 li, 100 wen, 120 wen mountain; One thousand jin and nine hundred wen on the bus... The mountain is dangerous and the donkey is few and empty, no more than one hundred and fifty wen; It's easy to care, and you can't pay 80 wen... "

During the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai, the poet, decided to return to his hometown Jiangyou for the Spring Festival. The whole journey from Chang'an to Jiangyou was 900 kilometers long. Except that the 300 kilometers of roads in the Guanzhong Plain were relatively flat, and the 600 kilometers of mountain roads were 30 days long, he said, "It's hard to go to Sichuan, but it's hard to go to the sky.". Li Bai went home for more than a month and spent 12 times. Today, it is about 30000 yuan.

It is precisely because it takes time, money and effort to go home for the New Year, and there are other high risks such as natural and man-made disasters, that some people have to lament "being a stranger in a foreign land alone". However, the dream of "returning a thousand miles of Jiangling in one day", which Li Bai and others had hoped for, has now come true, and most people's wishes of returning home for reunion during the Spring Festival can be successfully realized.