Empress Dowager Cixi's ordinary day's life, if placed in the present, how many yuan is needed to maintain. The author believes that the main expense of Empress Dowager Cixi is spent on meals. Therefore, from the analysis of the scale of Cixi's meal, it cost about two silver, and tried to convert it into yuan.
1. Before the early dynasty, Cixi began to eat and eat for a day
The early dynasty time of the Qing Dynasty was generally arranged at five or six o'clock in the morning, and Cixi, who was hanging the curtain to listen to the government, generally got up at yin time, that is, from three to five o'clock in the morning. After the palace maid waited for Cixi to get up and comb her hair, the first food Cixi ate in the day was rock sugar silver ear fungus, "often at this time, the old eunuch Zhang Fu used a box to send a bowl of ice sugar silver ear to the door of the Chuxiu Palace and handed it to the palace maid on duty... The old lady set up an old coffee table in front of her and scooped the silver ear with a silver spoon. This passage is quoted from the "Records of the Palace Women's Past", which records the memories of a palace maid named Rong'er in the late Qing Dynasty, who served Cixi for eight years and knew Cixi's life very well. In this article, I quoted information on Cixi's diet, which is basically from the book. Because we can only have one point of information to say a point, we can't rely on our own imagination.
According to the memories of this palace girl, after eating the rock sugar silver ear, Cixi still had to smoke shisha for a while. Quite a bit of getting up a bag of cigarettes, like the meaning of the living gods, Cixi eating shisha, of course, also need to be served, and look at the palace girl Rong'er recalled Cixi smoking "famous scene":
The old lady does not smoke Kanto smoke, smokes shisha, to my hand is a small green bag or two, golden yellow tobacco, smelling a fragrance, but also some spicy taste, but not thick, silk is very long, twisted in the hand is relatively soft. The empress dowager's habit is to hold a cigarette butter on the left, so I must stand on the left, standing about two square bricks away from the empress, after packing the cigarette, holding the cigarette bag with my right hand, and gently send the mouthpiece to the mouth of the empress.
After this bag of cigarettes is smoked, Empress Dowager Cixi has grown her spirit, and then she will drink milk tea, at the same time, the breakfast in the shou dining room will also be delivered, and the breakfast in this period is mainly eight treasure lotus seed porridge and various rice porridges (such as rice porridge, there are Yutian red rice, Jiangnan fragrant glutinous rice, barley rice), as well as various tea soups, such as almond tea, fresh soybean milk, beef bone marrow tea soup, etc.
But that's far from over. These porridges and teas are nothing more than foreplay. Then a food box would come in, and the palace maid Rong'er recalled:
There are also more than twenty kinds of breakfast in the food box, there are eight treasures of porridge, chicken porridge, there are sesame sauce baked cake, shortbread, white horseshoe, radish silk cake, clear oil cake, caramel, sugar packet, sugar cake, there are also fried steamed buns, fried back, there are vegetarian assortment of soy products, there are also halogen products, such as brine duck liver, brine chicken breast and so on.
When all these foods were offered and Cixi had food in her belly, she could go to the Morning Dynasty with full spirits. The early dynasty usually ends in about two hours. At the end of the early dynasty, Cixi had to change out of her heavy imperial clothes, remove the jewelry on her head, and change into light clothes. At this time, the rao room will offer dim sum, basically manchu food and the like, for Cixi to enjoy at breakfast.
Second, there are more than 100 kinds of dishes for lunch, and each dish can only eat a maximum of two bites, most of which are decorations
Around 10:30 a.m., the Imperial Dining Room had prepared lunch for Cixi. The palace maid Rong Er recalled that there were one hundred and twenty kinds of dishes for lunch, and they were served the same. "The old lady chooses at will, she loves to eat this today, and she loves to eat that tomorrow, and it is impossible for other people to guess which dish she is sure to eat." It is worth mentioning that these more than one hundred and twenty dishes were arranged by the imperial dining room, and Cixi did not have the right to order like the next restaurant.
What are these more than 100 dishes? We can't speculate, but the author found the meal list of Empress Dowager Cixi recorded in the "Meal Bottom File" on the seventh day of the first month of the Guangxu Decade (1884):
Hot pot two products: Eight treasures of milk pig hot pot, gold and silver duck hot pot;
Four large bowl dishes: bird's nest "膺" word pot roasted duck, bird's nest "Shou" word three fresh fat chicken, bird's nest "many" word red and white chicken shredded, bird's nest "Fu" word assorted chicken shredded;
Four kinds of huai bowl dishes: bird's nest white chicken shredded, sea honey ham, three fresh pigeon eggs, large stir-fried meat stewed elm mushroom;
Six dishes: bird's nest mixed pot roasted duck shreds, mushrooms with boiled fish fillets, green shoots to dry meat embryos, meat slices braised magnolia slices, crushed chicken, fried shrimp cakes;
Two products on a plate: hanging stove duck, hanging furnace pig;
Four products of rao: Shouyi white sugar oil cake, Shouyi alfalfa cake, Chengsha stuffed peach, jujube mud stuffed longevity peach;
Soup dish 1 product: bird's nest eight immortals soup;
Noodles: chicken noodles;
Two plates of grams, four plates of steamed food, four plates of pork, and four plates of lamb.
We counted with a small hand, the above menu has 38 kinds of food, and then Cixi will also come with a table of "Tian'an Meal", that is, according to this specification, another set of different, adding up to 78 products. These 78 products are the traditional main seats. The emperor, empress, and empress dowager also had to eat dishes, and Cixi also had her own small kitchen, adding up to 100 dishes.
The palace maid recalled that there were more than 120 dishes in Cixi lunch, and the record of the bottom file of the meal was 78 products of the main table, and the author believes that the two phases confirm that the number of compromises is about 100 dishes.
These 100 dishes, Cixi can not eat no matter what, most of the dishes are used to support the scene, doomed to waste. Cixi often eats in the body and temple, more than 100 dishes are far and near, what if you can't reach it? It didn't matter, Cixi looked at which dish it was, and the old eunuch who served the meal moved the dish to the empress dowager's side and used a spoon to scoop it into the cloth for the old empress. The palace maid recalled:
If the old lady tastes it and says, "This dish is not bad", she will spoon it with the spoon again, and the old eunuch who follows the waiter will withdraw the dish, and cannot scoop the third spoon, if you want to scoop the third spoon, the one who is the leader of the four eunuchs standing next to it will speak, shout "withdraw", this dish will not appear for ten days and half a month.
This description is a bit informative. First, Cixi, like other Qing Emperors, could not eat a third bite of delicious dishes; second, in order to prevent someone from poisoning Cixi's preferences, the imperial dining room would deliberately not make the dishes that Cixi liked to eat.
Writing here, we can draw a corollary, that is, Cixi's breakfast and lunch are rich in variety, but most of them can only be decorations, Cixi is not a big stomach king, she can only eat some symbolically, most of them will be withdrawn as is, which is really extravagant and wasteful.
As the saying goes, "don't sleep at noon, collapse in the afternoon". From 11:00 to 13:00 after lunch, it is the lunch break of Empress Dowager Cixi. This is understandable, after all, she has to get up at three o'clock in the morning every day, and if she does not take a lunch break, it is difficult to maintain energy in the afternoon.
According to Rong'er's recollection, around 14:00, Cixi will have an afternoon meal, dinner will be around 17:00, and there will be a meal before 19:00. The timing is rain or shine. Unfortunately, I did not find any historical information about Cixi's dinner, and I think it should be similar to the specifications of lunch.
To sum up, in addition to cixi's three meals a day, cixi also has three additional meals before the morning, after lunch, and after dinner.
3. How much is a day's meal converted into RMB? About 200,000 yuan
First of all, you should know that qing dynasty currency is a dual standard system of silver and copper, and for most of the late Qing Dynasty, prices and incomes were expressed in silver and copper coins, and the main currency circulating in the market was silver and copper coins.
So, what is the exchange ratio of silver and copper coins? The author's answer is that one or two pieces of silver are equal to about 1670 pieces of money. This figure comes from Mr. Zhang Dechang's book "The Life of a Beijing Official in the Qing Dynasty", according to the statistics of the author of the book, in the five to nine years of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, Zhejiang Huijian "exchanged one or two folds for copper money 1670 text." "Of course, the silver money exchange ratio has always been in flux, and for the sake of convenience, we have adopted the statement that one or two pieces of silver have been exchanged for 1670 pieces of money, and some calculations have been made accordingly.
1. How much is one or two pieces of silver equivalent to? Through the comparison of purchasing power, I came to the conclusion that one or two pieces of silver in the late Qing Dynasty were equal to about 267 yuan
To know how many yuan Cixi eats in a day, we must convert the purchasing power of a certain item to obtain an approximation. In this section, I will look at the purchasing power of flour and rice to see how much one or two pieces of silver are equivalent to about how much yuan.
The opera theorist Qi Rushan (1875-1962) said in his Memoirs of Qi Rushan:
Before the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (Note: 1900), thirty years ago, the price of goods can be said to have not changed... Eggs are always three small money one... Wheat flour is fifteen small coins per pound.
Qi Rushan's words clearly pointed out that in the late Qing Dynasty, 3 eggs were one and flour was 15 yuan a pound.
Today, I found on a shopping website that the price of a brand of flour 5KG is 25 yuan, 2.5 yuan / kg, in terms of buying flour, the purchasing power of 15 yuan in the late Qing Dynasty and 2.5 yuan in the present is the same, that is, 6 texts is about equal to the current 1 yuan, and one or two silver can be exchanged for 278 yuan.
Li Ciming wrote in his diary in 1884: "Buy 618 catties of rice, and use 11.74 taels of silver." ”
The pound here is the old scale, 1 pound is equal to the current 596.8 grams, then the 618 pounds of rice in the Qing Dynasty is equivalent to the current 737 pounds of rice, and one or two silver can be exchanged for 1670 yuan, it can be seen that in the Qing Dynasty, it takes about 26 yuan to buy a pound of rice. The price of rice fluctuates due to its quality and origin. On August 31, 2020, I found on a shopping website that a bag of 20 kilograms of rice costs 80 yuan, and a kilogram of rice costs about 4 yuan. Based on this data, suppose that the purchasing power of 26 yuan is equal to 4 yuan now, then 6.5 yuan is equal to 1 yuan now, and one or two pieces of silver, that is, 1670 yuan, can be converted into about 256 yuan.
By comparing the purchasing power of flour and rice, I came to the conclusion that the purchasing power of one or two pieces of silver in the late Qing Dynasty was equivalent to the purchasing power of 256 yuan to 278 yuan now. I take an average and think that one or two pieces of silver are equal to 267 yuan.
2. Cixi's daily meals are converted into RMB, conservatively estimated at more than 200,000 yuan
I couldn't know the price of every dish in the court directly, so I had to look outside the court and use "roundabout" tactics to see the price market in Beijing.
In his Memoirs of Qi Rushan, Qi Rushan recounted the food situation at Tongwenguan in 1888:
According to the number of students in the museum, the number of meals will be opened, six people will have a table, and each table will be silver and six or two, a total of ten dishes. At that time, six or two silver a table of dishes, can already have a whole bowl of bird's nest, shark fin.
According to Zhang Dechang's "The Life of a Beijing Official in the Qing Dynasty", Li Ciming often ate at the Guangheju Restaurant, and in the Tenth Year of Tongzhi (1874), Li Ciming's meal money in Guangheju for one year was 54 taels of silver, because the best dishes in Guangheju were home-cooked dishes, and the banquet for six people on a table would not exceed four or two silver.
From these two examples, Qi Rushan has a table for six people, six or two silver already has a whole bowl of bird's nest and shark fin, six people should not only have 6 dishes, the dishes are 10; because it is a home-cooked dish, Li Ciming's banquet for 6 people will not exceed 4 two silver. There should also be about 10 dishes. I came to the conclusion that eating a meal in a decent way in the restaurant costs between 4 taels and 6 taels. In this way, if it is 100 dishes, the cost is between 40 taels and 60 taels, which translates to RMB between 10680 yuan and 16020 yuan.
Considering that the dishes that Cixi eats are more upscale and the ingredients are more advanced, I multiply Cixi's lunch cost by 5, and the lunch cost is between 53,400 yuan and 80,100 yuan, taking an average of 66,750 yuan. It is speculated that the degree of dinner should be similar to that of lunch, the cost is also 66750 yuan, plus there are also thirty or forty samples of early morning and breakfast dishes, we calculate according to thirty samples, with reference to the lunch cost, the cost is between 16020 yuan and 24030 yuan, taking the average of 20025 yuan. Converted into RMB, Cixi's three meals a day cost 153525 yuan. Considering that around 14 o'clock every day, Cixi will have an afternoon meal, and before 19 o'clock there will be a dinner and a meal, it is conservatively estimated that Cixi's daily meal cost is more than 200,000 yuan.
After mathematical calculations, it was found that the cost of Eating and Drinking alone in a day was converted to about 200,000 yuan, which was probably her actual expenditure on meals. The degree of eating and drinking in a day, the waste is staggering.
As for the popular sayings on the Internet, some people mentioned that Xiao Dezhang once said that Empress Dowager Cixi could spend about 40,000 taels of silver a day, and the author felt that this answer was not credible, one was that they did not mention the historical source, and the other was that this figure was converted into 10.68 million yuan, which was too big.