According to historical records: "The Security Department, which specializes in imperial envoys, spent 292,000 yuan in less than a month. According to the specifications of the Forbidden City, there is also a kitchen in the palace, which is divided into nearly ten bureaus, such as meat bureau, vegetarian bureau, vegetable bureau, dinner bureau, tea bureau, cool bureau and dim sum bureau. Each bureau has more than a dozen chefs, totaling 100 people. Every meal, eunuchs presented more than 100 menus, all selected by Cixi. These two palaces cost more than 200 taels of silver every day. "
In 2008, Granny Liu saw that Jia's next crab meal would cost 24 taels of silver, lamenting that the small family could still live for one year. In other words, Empress Dowager Cixi ate enough silver a day to support a small family for eight years during her escape.
It's still on the way to escape. Empress dowager cixi usually lives in luxury, and it must be beyond everyone's imagination here, for example.
The daily use in the imperial palace in Qing dynasty was registered, and we can get a glimpse of the daily life in the imperial palace through these registration lists. A list shows that Empress Dowager Cixi ate 158320 apples,11750 pears, 77300 pears in Li Tang, 53295 pears in Xiaohong and 2275 persimmons during the period of 1897.
Apple alone spent as much as 654.38+0.5 million. Eat more than 400 apples every day on average. Empress Dowager Cixi ate almost 20 apples an hour even if she didn't sleep at night or rest during the day. Is this possible?
Of course not. It is true that Empress Dowager Cixi likes apples. However, the reason why she likes apples is not to eat, but to smell. Empress Dowager Cixi ordered some fruits to be placed in the living room and smelled the fragrance of these fruits. After the aroma of these fruits slowly dissipates, put on fresh fruits.
At that time, nearly 400 chefs were in charge of Cixi's daily meals. Cixi has two main meals every day, each with 150 main courses and 100 kinds of snacks and fruits. She really only eats four or five of these dishes. If she can't eat them, she will throw them away and occasionally give them to servants. This is just an ordinary working meal. Including other daily expenses, it costs more than 42,000 yuan a day. At that time, there were only 165438+ 10,000 Zhenyuan super warships. In this case, Cixi's personal expenses for one year are enough to build an invincible fleet.
Later, the old lady went to Fengtian by train. There are 50 stoves on the train. Each stove is equipped with a chef, and each chef cooks two dishes at a time. Because sometimes a dish takes two or three days to cook. The old lady likes ducks, and it takes two to three days for the chef to cook a duck. Every stove should be equipped with a small kitchen to make a fire. So as soon as the Queen Mother said she was hungry, 50 chefs started fanning the flames with banana fans. Of course, each stove should be equipped with several miscellaneous kitchens. For example, if the Queen Mother wants to eat bean sprouts, she needs someone to pick them one by one. Remove all the whiskers from the bean sprouts. At the same time, she can't break the bean sprouts herself.
Six years before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Beiyang Navy always wanted to acquire new warships, but the government refused to approve them on the grounds of "hard times and tight money". Of course, the old lady is still alive.
1894165438+1October 7th is the 60th birthday of the old lady. Jewelry for the old lady's birthday, gold 12000, silver 382000; Buying clothes costs 232,000 gold; The setting and decoration of scenic spots on the road from the Summer Palace to the Forbidden City cost 2.4 million taels of silver. The Queen Mother's birthday cost about 6.5438+million taels of silver, equivalent to the whole of beiyang fleet. Besides, in order to build the Summer Palace for the queen mother to rest after retirement, it cost 32 million taels of silver. After the old lady decorated the Summer Palace, she can form three beiyang fleet!