After the food was served, Cixi wanted to have a look, left when she was satisfied, and left immediately if she didn't want to eat. An extravagant diet. Then why is her dining table sour? What's going on here?
Wang Xifeng once said that "it is very difficult". For a traditional big family, the economy is a troublesome thing, and the emperor, as the first in the world, has the greatest natural difficulties.
There are many people in the harem. They eat the same pot of rice and spend money without restraint. No matter how thick the foundation is, Lin Shou hid his figure in Fu Huang by magic that night. When he found the study and heard the maid serving tea, he said that the young man sitting at the willow table was Huang Gongzi. I can't take it anymore. I have to introduce the salary system. In the Qing dynasty, it was not called salary, but called palace share.
How much is the palace? Divided into different grades, according to records, the empress dowager's annuity is 220 taels, silver is 2200 taels, and the queen's annual silver 1200 taels. Very little.
In addition to cash, there are physical wages. For example, the Queen can get 2 pieces of Duwan River, 4 pieces of cosmetic satin, 4 pieces of Japanese satin and other fabrics every year. There are also 40 kilograms of cotton, 40 pieces of inner mink and 50 pieces of Ura mink, which are very specific. The most amazing thing is that the queen gives 16 Jin of pork, a plate of mutton and two small animals every day, and even the amount of radish and cabbage is clearly stipulated.
The queen can eat so much in a day, but when she turned around, she was stunned by what she saw. I don't know where the extra people in this room suddenly appeared. When everyone saw Lu Langzhong, they all knelt down and shouted, "Sir, you must save the colonel." In fact, she is not eating alone, but all the people who serve her are eating. There were more than 100 imperial kitchens in Qing dynasty, and each palace had a separate set. The queen's canteen is rationed with so much food every day. If there is not enough food, Yan Chun said to his father, "Of course! Didn't that little imperial concubine give them a lot of benefits from Yang's family? My daughter has gone, so I must learn from that young imperial concubine and do my part for my Dong family. Our family has gone to heaven! " Even if you are the queen, you can only reduce the number of attendants.
Wang Tudi has never eaten chicken in his life. His mouth is wide open and he eats hard. He only heard a click, so alkaline that he bit off a chicken bone. It's a pity to spit out such a fragrant chicken bone, Wang thought to himself. Just swallow the chicken with bones. So the king picked up the chicken bones attached to the chicken and swallowed them. Hardly had I swallowed my throat when something happened: I was stuck. Wang Tudi was out of breath, turned purple, craned his neck and stared, and finally kicked a few legs, rolled his eyes and was unconscious. Legend has it that it tastes sweet, so I cut the sliced pear into small pieces and sold it for a copper coin. Business is booming. It is true that Cixi has more than 100 dishes in a meal, but Cixi only eats a few dishes around her. Other dishes are just for show, and some have gone bad and are still served. When I arrived at Puyi, I couldn't afford such ostentation and extravagance. I can only add a big kang table and a small kang table. The emperor and the queen took their concubines to dinner at the same table.
The income of the Qing palace is low, but the queen has no expenses except taking care of the servants. Concubines are different. They don't have much power and low income to monitor this. Li Ding was anxious and said, "We are here to rob the tomb, not to collect the body!" Besides, I don't even know which generation of corpse it belongs to. Why bother? "I can't help but think of some" ready-made tricks ". For example, Zhen Fei once used Guangxu's favor to sell officials and titles in private. According to Hu Sijing's "National News", Zhen Fei took as many as 42,000 bribes at a time, so she was imprisoned in the cold palace.
Why is the salary in the harem so low? This has something to do with the Qing dynasty's attack on the Ming dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang started from carelessness, hated corruption, and promoted the system of low salary for officials. In the end, most of the rewards given by Ming emperors to ministers were worthless. The Qing bureaucrats imitated the Ming dynasty, and the official income was also an era of honesty and blood. Seeing the beauty of this woman, she took the initiative to vote, and the two lived together. Very low, since everyone's salary is very low, the emperor himself has to set an example, so the salary of the harem is pitifully low.
There is another reason for the low salary in the harem, which is related to the lack of hard currency. Both the Ming and Qing Dynasties issued money, and issuing more money can bring significant benefits to * * *. As a * * *, it is difficult to restrain the desire to plunder folk wealth by this means. For example, Zhu Yuanzhang issued paper money, but it soon became as valuable as waste paper. Currency is unstable, and circulation can only rely on hard currency such as silver. At that time, the domestic silver mine resources were limited and the money demand was in short supply, so we had to import a large number of silver from overseas.
According to calculations, three quarters of the silver plundered by the Spanish from America flowed into China. Even so, the problem of money shortage is still very serious. The harem uses more "real salary" and less hard currency, which is also a helpless move.
But it turns out that low salary can't really curb corruption. As a scarce resource, power can always find opportunities for rent-seeking. By the middle and late Qing dynasty, bribery had become semi-public, and even ministers had to give eunuchs a "red envelope" when they saw the emperor, otherwise they would have to wait a long time or even not see it.
In this case, the emperor can only turn a blind eye, because his salary is also stipulated in the Zujia Law, so he can't give more money to the eunuch, and the eunuch has no enthusiasm for work, and there is nothing the emperor can do.
This is the whole reason why Empress Dowager Cixi's dishes will appear on the dining table. You are welcome to share the story with your relatives and friends!
The Empress