In the Song Dynasty, there was a famous man named Fan Zhongyan. His life is very brilliant. He studied, wrote articles and fought in North Korea, leaving many poems that have been passed down through the ages, often very literary. For example, Guan Qiang had a long frost all over the ground, but Ran Yan didn't come back to his home, and people lost sleep. Is the general white-haired and crying? Describing the homesickness of the northwest soldiers incisively and vividly, they expressed their desire to make contributions, and the story of Yueyang Tower, which was selected as a middle school text, was even more magnificent, which not only made Yueyang Tower a treasure of literati for thousands of years, but also made Teng, a good friend who would not have left his name in the history books, go down in history. This is all thanks to Fan Zhongyan, who is really generous.

But Fan Zhongyan doesn't stop there. Besides being good at writing articles and fighting wars, he is also very good at governing places. Specifically, he can easily resolve some very bad situations and even turn disasters into blessings. Some operations are often inexplicable and surprising, but in contrast, we will find that in the face of the same situation, his colleagues often fall into various passive situations, which leads to widespread indignation and resentment, and always sets off Fan Zhongyan's ability to govern the local area very well.

At that time, according to the tradition of the Northern Song Dynasty, Fan Zhongyan was sent to be a local governor. The talented Fan Zhongyan went to Hangzhou as a magistrate today. The magistrate in the Northern Song Dynasty actually had considerable authority. As a county magistrate, he actually corresponds to the present, at least a municipal party committee of a prefecture-level city or simply a provincial party secretary, who is in charge of the treasuries of several county governments. Strictly speaking, the task is not light, but Fan Zhongyan is not bitter at all. He often treats government affairs with snacks and snacks, and manages Hangzhou in an orderly way.

In ancient times, the famine in their area was a great challenge to the local rulers. If this challenge passes, it can achieve a lot. If it is not passed, it will often lead to destruction and even civil strife.

At that time, before Fan Zhongyan, there were several traditional solutions: First, opening a government granary, which was a lot of clean options. There are the following risks: first, it may cause adverse reactions in the subsequent court, which often causes serious damage to local administrative expenses; Secondly, it will cause local officials to release grain, but instead of solving the problem, the released grain will be forcibly redeemed by profiteers, making the local famine more serious.

Second, immediately seek the support of the imperial court, asking for help from the imperial court, hoping that the imperial court will support itself, but there are also risks, that is, sometimes the road is not very smooth, and this place may be easily eaten on a large scale before the food arrives, or the support allocated by the imperial court may be directly deducted by the government, and many people at the scene cannot be saved.

Fan Zhongyan refused both methods. He thought of some very surprising ways to get the government to allow profiteers to raise food prices substantially, taking advantage of this time when most ordinary people were poor and helpless and raised a lot of ultra-low-cost funds to build public buildings.

Some people may think, isn't this driving ordinary people to death? They are starving to death, and the government colluded with profiteers to raise food prices so much and squeeze the hungry people to do this and that.

In fact, Fan Zhongyan's move has indeed received miraculous effects, which is of course Fan Zhongyan's foresight. First of all, by allowing the government to raise food prices, it is natural for profiteers to raise food prices crazily, and finally the food prices in Hangzhou have reached a very horrible position. Later, foreign grain merchants smelled the smell of picking up money, and a large number of grain merchants flocked to bring their own dry food. Once a large number of foreign grain merchants arrive, facing the extremely saturated grain market, they will start to fight price wars and even start dumping products, which makes local profiteers complain bitterly in order not to go bankrupt.

But before the food price comes down, so many hungry people will suffer heavy casualties if they don't give relief. So the witty Fan Zhongyan creatively thought of it? Working for unemployment benefits? This kind of welfare policy seems to be really squeezing poor ordinary hungry people, but in fact it has stabilized social order, increased employment and stimulated consumption, which has won many benefits in one fell swoop. It really deserves the title of a generation of famous ministers.