Friends who often see the court drama must be familiar with the word golden melon seed, the emperor is happy, will always grab such a handful of golden melon seeds to the eunuch minister concubines at the bottom, and those eunuch ministers who are rewarded with golden melon seeds are mostly weeping with joy, kneeling down and prostrating their heads like pounding garlic.
So what is a rare thing about golden melon seeds, worth these palace people who have seen the world so out of shape?
Golden melon seeds, as the name suggests, are melon seeds made of gold, but in fact, the actual meaning is almost the same. It was originally a currency circulating in the folk, that is, a kind of broken gold in the shape of melon seeds, because there is no fixed production process, no mold, and even no weight and heat requirements, so that the size of the golden melon seeds is different, and it can even be said that there are no two golden melon seeds in the world.
It can be seen that the golden melon seed is a kind of broken gold with a very rough construction process, so initially it was also the same as gold and silver as the circulation market currency, which is not rare. Until the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor ordered that the people were not allowed to circulate gold and silver, and only high-ranking officials and nobles, princes and nobles could use gold and silver. This will make the golden melon seeds truly become rare.
This is not the end, although the dignitaries and princes and nobles can have golden melon seeds, but there are many dignitaries and princes and nobles in the capital. Casually throwing a stone into the crowd can hit an official of more than four pins. Therefore, at this point, the golden melon seeds are not a rarity in the eyes of these officials and nobles. What really made the value of golden melon seeds soar was the Beginning of the Qing Dynasty.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the golden melon seeds began to become the emperor's royal objects, and the princes and ministers did not have any, and the golden melon seeds were on its "golden" peak, although the golden melon seeds had lost their monetary functions, nor could they be sold as commodities, and they could only be seen and could not be used, but the "lost" golden melon seeds had a more beautiful "occupation" - becoming the emperor's reward.
Speaking of this, the exaggerated performance of those eunuchs and concubines in the Qing court drama is well understood, the golden melon seed as the emperor's exclusive, the reward to the people below is the emperor's grace, so the golden melon seed in addition to its own value, more important is the honor it symbolizes. The preciousness of the Golden Melon Seed of the Qing Dynasty, in addition to its own value due to the strange goods, more importantly, it became the exclusive of the emperor, and the prince and the minister possessed it, which symbolized the bathing of the emperor's grace and was the big red man in front of the emperor.
In the Qing opera "The Biography of Zhen Huan", Shen Meizhuang grabbed a handful of golden melon seeds for Su Peisheng, and Su Peisheng's face changed suddenly, and he even said, "It's too precious," because as the emperor's personal eunuch, he understood too well the weight of the imperial grace symbolized by the golden melon seeds, which was a symbol of honor and status, and this level of grace was definitely not something that his little eunuch could consume.
However, there is also a dramatized existence of TV dramas here, the real Qing Emperor rewarded golden melon seeds is absolutely not so generous, you know, Zhang Tingyu, as an old minister of the Kangxi to Qianlong Three Dynasties, the maximum reward is 20,000 taels of silver, converted into golden melon seeds do not need a can, full of a handful is.
Therefore, a large number of golden melon seeds like in the Qing court drama are absolutely non-existent. As a symbol of the emperor's grace, the emperor will never be so generous, after all, things are rare and expensive. If you can easily reward a golden melon seed, and then the golden melon seed can be seen everywhere, how can the golden melon seed symbolize the grace of the emperor? Why should a courtier who has been rewarded with a golden melon seed be so grateful to Shu Zero and regard it as an honor?
Therefore, in the actual Qing Dynasty, the emperor generally did not easily reward gold melon seeds, and the formal rewards were mainly silver, silk, etc. The reward of more than a dozen golden melon seeds was already the emperor's grace. The courtiers who received the reward were bound to be grateful and die hard to the emperor.
The conclusion is already ready to come out, why can a small golden melon seed make the princes and nobles of the Qing Dynasty see it so out of shape? As broken gold, golden melon seeds originally existed as currency, but in the Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, golden melon seeds lost their function as currency and could no longer circulate in the market. At this point, the golden melon seeds have completely become a collection that can only be seen and cannot be used. It cannot be used as money to become wealth, and it is slightly shabby as a collectible. At this time, the golden melon seeds can be said to be coldly received.
Until the Qing Dynasty, the golden melon seed completely became the emperor's exclusive use, became a reward, became a symbol of imperial grace, at this time the status of the golden melon seed really rose to the top, the princes and nobles got it as a reward thanksgiving Dade, weeping bitterly, the harem concubines got the golden melon seed reward and were eager to frame up in their own palace, showing off to the eunuchs and other concubines who came and went.