Current location - Recipe Complete Network - Complete cookbook - Empress Dowager Cixi lived a luxurious life. How much does it cost her to eat a meal?
Empress Dowager Cixi lived a luxurious life. How much does it cost her to eat a meal?
As the last feudal dynasty in history, the Qing Dynasty directly led China to enter a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society from a feudal society. After Qianlong, there was basically no decent emperor in the Qing Dynasty, which led to the tyranny of Cixi for half a century. Cixi lived a luxurious life. It is said that all the gold, silver and jewels he married after his death are calculated by tons, and in daily life, Cixi is also extremely extravagant, which can be seen from Cixi's daily diet.

According to the palace notes, the daily recipes of Cixi and Guangxu are as follows: 50 Jin of pork (pig elbow), one pig, one sheep and two chickens and ducks; Two liters of new polished rice, one and a half liters of purple rice, three liters of glutinous rice, three kilograms of glutinous rice flour, fifteen kilograms of white flour, one kilogram of buckwheat flour, one kilogram of wheat flour, three-in-one pea flour (about four and a half) and five spoonfuls of sesame seeds (about two or two dollars); Two pounds of sugar, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, eight ounces of tin sugar and eight ounces of honey; Walnut kernel 42, pine kernel 22; Twenty-eight eggs, four ounces of medlar, eight ounces of dried dates ... 15 pounds of fresh vegetables. There are also some delicious foods such as bird's nest, shark's fin, sea cucumber and tremella.

It is obviously impossible for two people to eat hundreds of pounds a day. What they can't finish will definitely not stay until the next day. This shows how extravagant Cixi is. We can make a preliminary calculation of how much food we need a day. It is obviously unrealistic to study the price of everything one by one. Let's take eggs as an example and make a rough calculation.

According to Li's Notes on the South Pavilion, Guangxu wanted four eggs for breakfast, and the price given by the chef was thirty-four taels of silver, that is, eight and a half eggs. According to the price at that time, an egg is actually about two pence, and one or two ounces of silver can buy 500 eggs. In other words, the price of the chef's eggs is more than 4000 times the market price! It is no exaggeration to call it the "golden egg". As for the extra money, everyone knows where it went. It can be seen that Cixi needs 28 eggs a day, which costs more than 200 taels of silver.

The dishes on the menu must be of high quality, and it is natural that they are expensive. According to the current price, 20 yuan, a kilo of super earth eggs, is about 10, two yuan each. This is converted into 1 silver, and now it is about 1000 RMB, and an egg is about 8500 RMB. According to the current pork price, the gross weight of a pig is 200 Jin, 10 yuan Jin, and the market price is 2,000 yuan. According to the price marked by the Ministry of the Interior, Cixi wants to pay 8.5 million RMB, or 8,500 taels of silver. 40 yuan a catty of mutton, 30 jins of a sheep, two 60 jins. The market price is 2,400 RMB, that is, 2.4 taels of silver, which has increased by 4,250 times to Cixi, 10200 taels of silver.

Next, the total amount of other ingredients will be more than 22,000 taels of silver, which means that Cixi and Guangxu will spend more than 42,000 taels of silver on their food a day, totaling more than 20 taels of silver per meal13,000. This is just food, not counting other pastimes. This shows how extravagant Cixi is. It seems that it is not unreasonable to be beaten by the west in the late Qing Dynasty.