Full-text Translation of Fu's Disaster Relief

original text

Fuzheng knows Qingzhou. When the river overflows, people will eat while flowing. Never put off till tomorrow what you can persuade the people to make a millet, benefit the officials, and get more than ten areas of public and private houses, which are scattered to receive their salaries. The officials of the former capital, with the lack of strangers, endowed with Lu, gathered the people, chose the old, the weak and the sick, and still wrote their work, and invited them to reward them another day. Five days later, I sent someone to comfort me with wine and meat rice. Out of sincerity, everyone did their best. The benefits of vicious mountain forests can be used by the living and taken by the refugees at will. The deceased was buried in a big mound, called a "cluster mound". When the wheat is ripe next year, the people will receive food from far and near and raise thousands of soldiers. When the emperor heard this, he sent an envoy to praise him. Before that, disaster relief workers gathered on the People's Wall to eat porridge, steamed it into illness, or waited for a few days before serving it, killing it in the name of saving it. Bi's legislation is simple and widely accepted internationally.

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When Fu Bi was the magistrate of Qingzhou in Song Dynasty, there was a flood in the area north of the Yellow River, and people went into exile to beg. Fu Bi persuaded the people in its jurisdiction to take out food, increased the government's grain reserves, and found more than a dozen public houses and private houses for these refugees to live in, so that they could get firewood and water. Fu Bi pays salaries to officials who go to help refugees who live here without food and clothes. If officials go to the places where refugees live and distribute food to the elderly, the weak, the sick and the disabled, Fu Bi will record their contributions and agree to play for them, and then ask for compensation for them later. Every five days, he also sent people to bring food with wine and meat to the officials who handled refugee affairs and treat them with sincerity, so everyone of the officials tried their best for this matter. Let the refugees take the things produced in the mountains and lakes as long as they can help people survive. The deceased focused on building big graves for their burial. From a distance, it was a cluster of graves. The next year, when the wheat was harvested, the refugees each received food according to the distance of the journey and returned to their hometown. Thousands of these people were recruited as soldiers. When the emperor heard about it, he sent messengers to praise and sympathize with Fu Bi. Before that, the so-called disaster relief was to gather the victims in the city and cook porridge for them. More people gather, and the plague will spread. Some people were hungry for several days and died on the road without porridge. This method is nominally to help the victim, but in fact it is to kill the victim. Therefore, Fu Bi's method is simple and complete, and the whole world thinks it is a model.