I believe that everyone often sees some bridge sections in ancient books, a certain minister has made a great contribution, the emperor or the lord is very happy, what reward should he give him? Give Jin Wanliang, the scumbag hunter Liu An in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, because Liu Bei came to defect, he killed his wife and took meat to entertain Liu Bei, and later Cao Cao heard Liu Bei talk about this matter and felt moved, "Cao Nai ordered Sun Qian to give it with gold and two. ”
Let's not talk about the right and wrong of Liu An's matter, Boss Cao is just hearsay, he waved a big hand and gave a hundred and two gold, even if Cao Cao's family is big, it is reasonable to be unable to afford such a cost!
Gold as one of the most precious metals now, high prices are rare, according to the description of the ancients, should be a lot of China, ah, where did they go? Therefore, some readers speculate that in modern times, when unequal treaties were signed, the Qing government lost money? In fact, this view is wrong, although gold is hard currency, but because of the low level of reserves, it is far from reachable.
In modern history, the Qing government signed more than 1,600 unequal treaties, during which it paid more than 1.37 billion taels of silver, which indeed created the lack of silver in China, but it has never been heard of any treaty that is traded with gold.
We can first look at how gold comes from, because the chemical properties of gold are very stable, so the gold in nature is mainly elemental, some people dig in the "gold mountain" rich in gold mines, or the river gold panning with gold particles, shake off the soil with a sieve, so that only the gold lump is left, and it is heated and melted in a special mold to facilitate storage. However, such efficiency can be imagined. In the Qing Dynasty, which was rich in silver metal, one or two pieces of silver could be worth 1,000 yuan, and one or two pieces of gold could be worth 10 taels of silver, which was enough to see its preciousness.
But why in the books of the ancients, it always feels like gold is like the cabbage of the rotten street? In fact, we misunderstand the meaning of "gold" in the ancient text, and many times, the "gold" in the text actually refers to all metals. The Qing Dynasty Chen Changzhi's engraving of the "Explanation of Words" points out that "gold, five-color gold also." Yellow is long. For a long time, there is no raw clothing, a hundred chains are not light, and there is no violation of the revolution. A trip to the West. Born of the earth, from the soil; left and right, like gold in the shape of the earth; present sound. All gold belongs to gold. "What does that mean?" Gold " is (red, blue, black, white, yellow) five-color metal general term, gold is the first of the hardware, long buried in the ground will not produce rust spots erosion marks, thousands of hammers and hundreds of refinements will not be lost lighter, born in the soil, the glyph uses "soil" as the side; the left and right two points of "soil", like the appearance of golden sand hidden in the soil layer.
The Han Dynasty scholar Ban Gu believed that gold had a third class: "Gold is the top; silver is the middle; red gold is the bottom." "The red gold mentioned here is actually brass. That is to say, the ancient "gold" included all metals, and before the Han Dynasty, the method of brass smelting was not mature, because the scarcity of copper also became a currency.
When Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, hired Sun Tong, the uncle of Confucianism, as a Taichang Ling, the history books recorded that "500 jin of gold was given". What is recorded here should be brass and other metals, otherwise Liu Bang is not so generous, so in the text, unless the word "gold" is pointed out by name, then gold can basically be used to represent all metals, so ancient gold is not as much as we think. So readers also need to pay attention!