The Qing Dynasty, as the last feudal dynasty in history, directly led to our country from a feudal society into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Since Qianlong, the Qing Dynasty has basically not produced a decent emperor, leading to the half-century-long dictatorship of Cixi. Cixi lived a lavish life, reportedly accompanied by tons of gold, silver and jewels after her death, and in her daily life, Cixi was also extremely lavish, as evidenced by Cixi's daily meals.
According to "Palace Trivia", Cixi, Guangxu's one-day menu is roughly as follows: plate meat (pork elbow) fifty pounds, a pig, a sheep, chickens and ducks, each of two; two liters of new fine rice, purple rice, one and a half liters of rice, three liters of rice, three pounds of round-grained rice noodles, fifteen pounds of white noodles, buckwheat noodles, one pound, one pound of wheat flour, pea flour, three hectoliters (about four and a half), sesame seeds, one hectolitre five spoonfuls (about two taels of two dollars); two pounds of sugar two taels of five money The following are some of the most important things to consider when looking for a new product: one catty of white sugar, eight taels of pot sugar, eight taels of honey; four taels of walnuts, two taels of pine nuts; twenty-eight eggs, four taels of wolfberries, eight taels of dried jujubes, and fifteen catties of fresh vegetables. Another bird's nest, shark's fin, sea cucumber, silver fungus and a number of mountain treasures and sea food.
Two people, a day to eat hundreds of pounds of things, that is obviously impossible to eat things that can not be eaten certainly will not stay until the next day to eat again. This shows how extravagant Cixi was. We can do some preliminary math to see how much a day's food would cost. One by one to test the price of each thing is obviously unrealistic, we will take the eggs as an example, a rough estimate.
Li Baojia's in the "Nanting notes" recorded, Guangxu breakfast to four eggs, the Imperial Household Catering to the price of thirty-four silver, that is, each egg to eight and a half silver. According to the prices at that time, an egg is actually about two cents, one or two silver can buy 500 eggs. That is to say, the price of eggs in the imperial kitchen is more than four thousand times the market price of eggs! Call it "golden eggs", not too much, as for these extra money, we all know where to go. This can be seen, Cixi day to twenty-eight eggs, will have to spend more than two hundred taels of silver.
The food on the menu, definitely belongs to the high-grade goods, expensive is natural. According to the current price, super earth eggs count 20 fast money a catty, a catty probably count 10 it, one is two dollars, probably this discount 1 two silver is about 1000 yuan now, an egg is 8500 yuan. According to the price of pork now, a pig counts 200 pounds gross weight, counting 10 yuan a pound, the market price of 2,000 yuan, in accordance with the price of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Cixi should pay 8.5 million yuan, or 8,500 pieces of silver. Mutton counted 40 yuan a pound, a sheep counted 30 pounds, two is 60 pounds, the market price is 2,400 yuan, that is, 2.4 bright silver, to the Cixi that turned over 4,250 times, 10,200 pieces of silver.
Next other ingredients, totaling more than 20,000 taels of silver, that is to say, Cixi and Guangxu one day to count down the light food will be more than 40,000 taels of silver, a total of more than thirteen thousand taels of silver per meal. This is only food, not counting a variety of other pastimes. From this we can see, Cixi is how extravagant. It seems that the late Qing Dynasty by the West to beat the seven meat and eight is not unreasonable ah.