A glimpse of life in Sui and Tang Dynasties: Post Offices and Posthouses in Tang Dynasty

Yuan Zhen, a famous poet in the middle Tang Dynasty, stayed in the elegant room of Fushui Post on his way back to Chang 'an, the capital of Beijing. He has been lying down, but it happened that another person came, insisting that he live in a private room. This is obviously a challenge with him to see who is worth more. This person is not bigger than Yuan Zhen's grade < P >, but a eunuch. How can Yuan Zhen refuse? The man insisted on

living, but Yuan Zhen refused to let him, so he solved it by force. That

man's entourage actually hit Yuan Zhen with a whip.

Yuan Zhen couldn't swallow it in one breath, and the post office couldn't stop. Even

he went back to Chang 'an at night to report to the imperial court. As a result, Yuan Zhen < P >, who was completely justified, was demoted to join the army as an official of Jiangling Prefecture. That happened in February (81) in the fifth year of Yuanhe, Tang Xianzong, which caused a great uproar in public opinion in the ruling and opposition parties. Just because of such a fight and such a complaint, the very ordinary Fushui post has become a famous post through the ages. It is written in almost all historical books. Yuan Zhen is a famous poet, but another person's reputation is not worse than his. This

person is the notorious eunuch Chou Shiliang.

There are different opinions about this man who fought with Yuan Zhen. The Biography of Yuan Zhen in Old Tang Dynasty said that he was Liu Shiyuan, but the Records of Cases of Xian

said that he was Chou Shiliang. Relatively speaking, Chou Shiliang was more famous, favored by the emperor, and sent a bigger leader, so Chou Shiliang was more likely.

first, the function and grade of the post office

if you can't get back on the same day, you have to live outside, or visit relatives, or stay in a hotel. As the saying goes, "visiting relatives is not

like the following shop". Relatively speaking, staying in the shop is more comfortable and convenient because it costs money.

The hotel has complete facilities, both public and private, large and small. Let's introduce the posthouse first.

Post houses are officially run and set on both sides of the post road, providing accommodation and transportation for officials and business trips. There are also some aliases for posthouse, such as post booth, post house, pavilion Hou and delivery house.

from the names of "post booth" and "post house", we can know that the post station at that time also had the function of postal service.

generally speaking, there is a post office for thirty miles. The article "The Ministry of Military Affairs of Shangshu" in Volume 5 of the Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty says: "Where there is one post in thirty miles, there are nine in the world where there are 1,63." Among these posts, there are 1297 land posts, 26 waterway posts, and others are both land and water posts. In fact, in terms of function, land post is equivalent to the nature of county-level passenger station and government guest house on modern highway < P > trunk line, while waterway post is equivalent to dock and hospitality < P > station. However, the level of posthouse is much higher than that of passenger station and guest house, and there are far fewer people who can enjoy its treatment.

"3 miles" is only a rough distance, and it may be denser in the inland or prosperous areas, while it may be thinner in remote areas, similar to modern times. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, there might be a posthouse less than 3 miles between Chang 'an and Luoyang, and there might be no posthouse more than 1 miles on the way to the western regions (now in Xinjiang, Gansu).

In the Tang Dynasty, the posthouse was very large in scale, with buildings, horse pens, living rooms, warehouses and so on. There are several warehouses, including wine warehouse, tea warehouse and pickles warehouse. Big posthouse and ponds. There are several living rooms, with different equipment conditions

. Some superior rooms also have living rooms with different standards and grades, which are similar to modern hotels

. There are not many presidential suites among them, so Yuan Zhen and Chou Shiliang fought

for "going to the hall".

the post office also has a certain number of means of transportation, and the means of transportation in the land post office are mainly horses and donkeys.

The number of horses and donkeys equipped in each post office is different according to different busy hours and passenger flow. The busiest

Du Tingyi's first-class post office is equipped with 75 horses, the first-class post office is equipped with 6 horses, the second-class post office is equipped with 45 horses, the third-class post office is equipped with 3 horses, the fourth-class post office is equipped with 18 horses, the fifth-class post office is equipped with 12 horses, the sixth-class post office is equipped with 8 horses, and there are seven grades. Horses are supplied by government departments. The land and water post office supplies ships, four big ones and two smallest ones. The

transportation in the post office is provided free of charge to past officials or officers. As for what level of officials enjoy the treatment of

several horses, it is said below.

The functions of the posthouse are so complete that there are many managers. Because the main purpose of setting up the post station was to transmit military information, the post station belongs to the Ministry of War and is directly led by the driver of the Ministry of War. Other officials

are managed by a top-down system.

The local government is directly led by the county governors, and each post station has a postman or an ambassador, and there are

one or more post clerks below, which is equivalent to the deputy post station. There are also some specific workers or laborers, called

"Yi Ding", "Yi Zi" or "Waterman". The post horse has the name of the post printed on its left front thigh and the name of the state printed on its neck. For example, horses in Shangyuan Post in Bianzhou are printed with the word Shangyuan on the left front thigh and Bianzhou or Bianzhou on the left neck

. This kind of horse is an official horse, and it is included in the national compilation. Of course, the forage it eats is uniformly supplied by the state, and it can be regarded as eating imperial grain! By analogy, the donkey in the posthouse is the official donkey, and of course it also eats the imperial grain.