If I give you ten thousand guan and send you back to Southern Song Dynasty , what kind of life will you have?
With a lot of money, you can buy a puppy in Xiuzhou during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Song Dynasty. With ten guan, it is enough for you to hold a decent banquet in Kaifeng during the reign of Emperor Huizong; one hundred. Guan can allow you to buy a cow in the southeast region during the Shaoxing period, or a horse in the southwest region.
Taking Songjiang as the unit, the bounty for killing Yan Poxi is 1,000 guan, and the reward for causing Jiangzhou is 10,000 guan. If you can get a thousand guan, you can buy an official post as Jinyi Xiaowei in the and western Zhejiang area at the beginning of Shaoxing.
Ten thousand guan, which was the living expenses for one month for the Empress Dowager of Cining Palace during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty. This may mean that if you paid 10,000 guan during the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty, you could enjoy the ultimate luxurious life in the Empress Dowager's Exclusive Edition for one month.
Yue Fei As the sharp sword of the Southern Song Dynasty to resist the Jin Dynasty, the imperial court paid 72,000 guan for its maintenance every year. If the 72,000 guan Song coins were converted into RMB based on the price of rice, it would be as much as 1.72 million.
Under the exchange of time and space, the modern and Song Dynasty
During the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty, the average price of high-end residences in Lin'an city was 50,000 yuan. The cost of building a self-built house is relatively low, about 30,000 guan. Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty once gave Liu Guangshi a house building subsidy of 230,000 guan. Judging from Yue Fei's annual salary, it only took eight months to buy a high-end apartment in the Kyoto area of the Southern Song Dynasty.
But if Yue Fei comes to Beijing in 2022, 1.72 million will be too much and his living standards will be greatly reduced. He may need to work for a few more years to buy a house that matches his status.
But in addition to his salary and civil servant benefits, Yue Fei also has an income that is the envy of everyone today. In the ninth year of Shaoxing (1139), Yue Fei also had another identity - a landlord who owned 38 rental houses in Jiangzhou.
According to historical records, "the daily rent payment is always 430 Wen." A room costs 37 wen per day. In other words, if we want to rent Yue Fei's house, we need to pay a monthly rent of 128 wen , which is the price of buying a puppy in Xiuzhou during the Xiaozong period.
This can not only support Yue Jiajun 's anti-financial role, but also fill in the price difference caused by time and space switching, helping Yue Fei realize housing for housing.
The above are the conversion results of rice price. However, when converting ancient coins into RMB based on rice prices, gold, and silver, the results of these three categories often vary greatly, and it is difficult to determine whether a certain category is a scientific conversion method. Moreover, the world is constantly changing. Ten thousand yuan thirty or forty years ago is not the same as ten thousand yuan now.
In the Southern Song Dynasty, due to the instability of the Central Plains and the collapse of the political situation, production declined, resulting in great differences in the purchasing power of money in various periods. Not only does it lead to rising prices, it also seriously hinders the popularity of official currency.
Among the people, not only copper coins made in the Song Dynasty were popular, but also old coins in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. However, the government is issuing a large number of Jiaozi, and the degree of depreciation is similar to the legal currency during the Republic of China. The ancients once lamented that "the sky is light and the clouds are leisurely, but they are the same today and in the past." As far as people's livelihood is concerned, it is not just the sky that is the same over the course of a thousand years.
In other words, considering the changing purchasing power and credit power of money at that time, it is difficult to determine the credibility and true value of html’s annual salary of 572,000 yuan. 's various results regarding the conversion of Yue Fei's annual salary into RMB are not aimed at seeking truth, but are more about imagining and supplementing Yue Fei's heroic image to meet today's expectations.
returns to Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty
We put Yue Pengju back to his era. In the first year of Longxing (1163), Song Xiaozong, the successor of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty, recalled the past to his ministers: "When I was serving the Supreme Emperor, I saw that the Supreme Emperor only had one or two hundred coins to eat. At this time, I was already frugal. "
Although this is just a whitewash of the power of a poor and weak country, the message is: A meal for Song Gaozong alone will cost about one to two hundred coins.What is the level of ? You can compare it with and .
"Nanjing Guanglu Temple Chronicles" records Hongwu Zhu Yuanzhang's breakfast menu: "mutton, goose, pork stir-fried with cabbage, wormwood in clear sauce, steamed pig's trotters, noodles with chopsticks, fragrant rice, beans "Soup and tea", this level of luxury is just for breakfast. It can be seen that for a ruler, Song Gaozong's dining expenses can be said to be very economical.
After recalling Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty, Emperor Xiaozong of the Song Dynasty commented on Qin Hui's food and drink expenses: "His family only had one or two hundred thousand yuan to live on. Every time the emperor held a banquet, he only spent one or two thousand yuan; The Hui family spent hundreds of thousands at a time. "The palace banquets during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty only cost ten and twenty guan, but Qin Hui's daily family banquets actually cost hundreds of guan.
By comparison, Yue Fei's annual salary of 72,000 in exchange for fighting for his life is probably only a month or two of food and beverage expenses for Qin Hui's family. Before , all salary conversions similar to those in dramas had to be silent in front of this fact.
72,000 guan and the last 1,000,000 guan
It is said that Yue Fei only had one hundred guan in assets after confiscating his house. This result is naturally unexpected. Perhaps we can guess the flow of his assets. Cheng Minsheng " Research on Prices in the Song Dynasty " has a section on "Weapons", which lists the prices of bows, arrows, crossbows and other weapons.
In the second year of Shaoxing (1132), Zhang Jun, the commander of the Shenwu Right Army, wrote a letter requesting the imperial household department to allocate funds to build weapons by himself. The following is the quantity and cost of the application:
Each bow costs two 800 liters;
A bow with one hundred arrows costs seven 400 vengeance, each of which is 74 vengeance;
A crossbow with one hundred arrows costs 6,500 vengeance, and each arrow costs 65 vengeance.
In the third year of Shaoxing, the weapons approved by the Shenwu Right Army included:
A pair of shawls, which cost ten guans and four hundred coins;
A helmet, which cost seven guans and eight hundred coins;
A pair of gold armor, which cost
A pair of red vests costs 40 guans and 100 ren;
A pair of red vests costs 17 guans and 300 ren.
The above is the price level of weapons during the Shaoxing period. Officials sometimes have to recycle weapon parts from civilians and re-create them. These are all wounds caused by long-term weaknesses. Jinren once lamented: "It is easy to shake the mountains, but it is difficult to shake the Yue family's army." Under the unfavorable current situation and the mist of the court, it will naturally be a huge expense to arm the Yue family's army with sophisticated weapons, which is enough. Evaporate any seemingly heavy annual salary.
Behind the seemingly high-profile reward is the unpredictable mind of Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty Wen Zhengming "Manjianghong·Brushing the Remnant Stele" put it in one sentence: "Wiping the remaining stele, the words "Emperor Fei" are vaguely readable. At first, relying on flying was so important, but later it was so cool. Isn't it a success? Death is a pity that cannot be redeemed by words. It is the most innocent thing, and it is even more miserable. If you don't think about it, why don't you think about Hui Qin's humiliation? Zaixiu talked about the mistake of crossing to the south. At that time, he was afraid that the Central Plains would be restored. What could he do?
Conclusion
After converting Yue Fei’s 72,000-year salary, what did we calculate? Coins may be difficult to calculate in the most scientific way, but people's hearts are clearly visible.
We tried to reshape characters by deconstructing history, but in the end we realized that this desire to reshape was actually for the purpose of "facing it squarely."
From this, we face the common predicament between ourselves and Yue Fei, see the blood and bleakness of life, see that the sky is the same as the past and present, and understand what makes a hero a hero.
