Zhang Hongjie, a professor at the Qing History Institute of Chinese Min University, wrote a biography of Zeng Guofan, which quoted an interesting story about the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
Emperor Tiandaoguang chatted with a university scholar and asked him what he had eaten in the morning, and the minister said that the minister was very simple and only ate 3 poached eggs in the morning. The Daoguang Emperor was very surprised to hear this, and said that you are so generous, you are not willing to eat a single one at breakfast.
The emperor was reluctant to eat eggs, which sounded like a strange thing, it turned out that the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at that time had done tricks on the accounts, and an egg was quoted for 30 taels of silver, which led to the emperor being so "simple". Think about it, this minister spent nearly a hundred taels of silver for breakfast, what a luxury. But in fact, according to the market price at that time, eggs were only worth a few pennies.
This incident is also recorded in the Miscellaneous Records of the Puppet Manchu Court, but it is not necessarily true.
The Qing Dynasty had other archives recording the food of the Daoguang Emperor, such as the breakfast on the 18th day of the first month of the fifth year of Daoguang (1826): bird's nest red and white duck, duck cabbage, braised silver wire, egg scrambled meat, lamb buns each.
You see, not only is there egg scrambled meat (this dish must be at least beaten with an egg), but also more expensive ingredients such as lamb, duck, and bird's nest, so the statement that the Guangdi Emperor is not even willing to eat eggs in the morning is not very reliable, more like a wild history joke.
But Daoguang was indeed a simple emperor. At the time of his reign, he was in a period of internal and external troubles in China, with a large amount of opium imports, a silver outflow, repeated setbacks in wars with the great powers, and indemnities for the cession of land. The whole court was very tight, so the Daoguang Emperor also had to cut down on food and clothing to maintain the life of the imperial family.
In the year of his ascension to the throne, the Daoguang Emperor issued a declaration of frugality, the Imperial Decree of Sound and Color, which quoted the ancients as saying: "The people are insufficient, and the king is enough." The people are poor, how rich can I, the emperor, go? Then he wanted to take the lead in frugality, hoping that this would strengthen the army and enrich the country.
Legend has it that when he was a prince, he once ate "noodle soup" at a snack bar outside the palace, and the soup in that family was so good that Daoguang still remembered it after becoming emperor, and one day he ordered the imperial dining room to make a bowl according to that.
I did not think that the next day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent someone to beg, saying that it would buy a dining room, which was in charge of supplying noodles, and the construction cost and personnel costs would cost about 60,000 taels, and then 15,000 taels would be allocated every year to ensure operation.
Dao Guang listened to the sigh and sighed: "You can't waste a penny for the sake of your mouth!" “
It can be seen that even if you become an emperor, it is difficult to eat a home-cooked meal, and it is often tens of thousands of expenses, can you achieve it without saving a little?
That's what about eating, but what about the aspect of wearing?
There is a reason why Daoguang has been named "the most slashing emperor in history" by many history buffs, as an emperor, he has been wearing patched clothes (except for dragon robes) for many years.
The so-called good at the top will be worse at the bottom. When the minister saw the emperor's style, how dare he get dressed, is that not trespassing? Therefore, the ministers also followed suit with a gray face, and even if there were new clothes, they had to be worn and worn again, and their attitude was clear in front of the emperor.
For a time, the price of old clothes in the major tailors in Beijing soared, and some were even twice as expensive as new clothes.
Moreover, as the saying goes, "the night pot of the Ming Dynasty is also a cultural relic", can the patch on the emperor be cheap?
Once, the "lake silk" he had worn for many years had a hole, and Daoguang was unwilling to replace it with a new one. The people of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were sent to mend, and it cost three thousand taels of silver before and after.
The emperor is completely angry, aren't you fooling around?
Officials of the Ministry of the Interior were also aggrieved:
The emperor wears, that is not an ordinary fabric, is a flowered lake silk, in order to sew and patch properly, the pattern is consistent with what you wore before, we found a lot of lake silk material, rarely can and the wear of the pattern just matched, before and after we cut hundreds of horses of cloth, to do this errand, 3000 two, is to save the calculation!
At this point, the emperor had nothing to say, and the matter had to be abandoned.
It can be said that the starting point for the Daoguang Emperor to be frugal is good. But the defeat of the Qing government at that time could have been changed by cutting back on food and clothing? Only grasping small amplifications, but not thinking about the way of fundamental change, is actually a kind of lazy government in disguise. In the end, in that chaotic era, the frugal royal family did not block the strong ships and cannons of the great powers, and the vision of a rich country and a strong people was in vain.
The picture source in the article is network, invaded and deleted
Sources of text materials: books such as the Biography of Zeng Guofan, Miscellaneous Records of the Puppet Manchu Court, and magazine articles such as the Forbidden City
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