"Thirty acres of land a cow, wife and children hot kiln head" This is the ultimate pursuit of ancient people, but also the dream of every ordinary person. However, with the development of the times, these simplest dreams have become somewhat difficult.
For now, it is simply a dream that young people cannot reach. Wanting to have a suitable wife, no house, no car, no two hundred thousand cars, seems to be a dream. Without the first two, if you want to have a child, it is even more a dream in your dreams.
Therefore, many times, some modern people are always envious of the ancient people, although their lives may be far inferior to ours, but do not worry about finding a wife. Moreover, according to historical records, as early as the era of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gaozu, it has been clearly stipulated that the government encourages students and compulsorily solves the bachelor problem, and sometimes the government also covers the distribution.
For such a phenomenon, many people are envious. Even some people will envy Wu Dalang when reading "Water Margin", because Wu Dalang not only has a very beautiful wife, but he is also a short man who sells cooking cakes, and he can actually make his wife a full-time wife without going out to work.
So, is Wu Dalang's life really worth enviing? How much money can he make in a day? Can you afford to raise a "full-time wife" in the Song Dynasty?
First, the standard of living in the Song Dynasty
According to records, the Song Dynasty should be the richest of all the Central Plains dynasties, according to the History of the Song Dynasty, the highest income of the Song Dynasty once reached 110 million, of course, this does not include all money, but also includes a lot of physical objects, but these figures are equivalent to at least 60 million yuan.
It can be said that the Song Dynasty is definitely the richest dynasty in history, and in theory, the living standards of the people of the Song Dynasty should also be very high. So is that actually the case?
According to records, in the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the living standard of the people was about one hundred dollars a day. That is to say, if a common man wants to maintain food and clothing, he must have an income of one hundred yuan a day, and a hundred yuan is also a hundred yuan.
So, what does this hundred dollars include?
According to records, the Song Dynasty reached a population of hundreds of millions, but the land was reduced by half, so the Song Dynasty was in a state of less land and more people. This has led to a rapid increase in land prices, and the price of houses has soared, although not as high as it is now, but it is definitely not much lower.
At that time, Su Dongpo, a great literary hero, bought a property in Yixing, which was as high as 500,000 yuan, and if he wanted a better house, the price was as high as 1.3 million yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the famous politician Ouyang Qian actually sighed, "I have never had a house!" The translation is, "I don't have a house when I'm old," which is embarrassing.
Therefore, most of the people in the Song Dynasty lived by renting, so what was the rent in the Song Dynasty? According to the standard of public rental housing in Kaifeng City in the Northern Song Dynasty, it is about fifteen yuan a day, and it is gradually increasing around the central area.
In addition, according to the records of the Song Dynasty, a bucket of rice during the non-war period of the Northern Song Dynasty was about thirty-six yuan. As for meat food, pork and mutton are about thirty or forty dollars a pound. As for clothes, they are worth only a few hundred dollars, and straw shoes are only four dollars.
The above is the living standard of the Song Dynasty, so how much does Wu Dalang need to spend a day?
2. Wu Dalang's living standards
If you only count Wu Dalang and his wife, it is a family of two. The first thing they have to face is the rent problem, because Wu Dalang has no real estate, so he can only rent a house, and the house he rents is in Yanggu County, so the rent will not need fifteen yuan, about half of it, that is, seven to eight yuan.
Then, to face the problem of eating, an adult needs two liters of rations a day, two people is four liters, according to the price of thirty-six yuan per bucket of rice, about fifteen yuan.
As for the daily needs of buying meat, in general, a pound of meat can eat several meals, so the cost of pork and mutton will not exceed thirty yuan, it should be about fifteen yuan.
Counting the cost of clothes and the cost of rouge gouache, Wu Dalang certainly did not need to pay too much money, almost equal to zero. As for Pan Jinlian, her clothes do not need to be changed every day, and she will die for fifty yuan a day, otherwise she will be a loser mother-in-law.
Therefore, the cost of dressing up and eating meat and buying vegetables should be less than eighty yuan.
Adding up all this overhead, it's probably only a hundred and three dollars, which is still an upward budget. Therefore, Wu Dalang raised a full-time wife, basically did not exceed the food and clothing line of adults in the Song Dynasty, so the pressure was not particularly large.
So, how much money did Wu Dalang make himself?
3. Wu Dalang's income
As we all know, Wu Dalang specializes in the cooking cake business, so his source of salary is to sell cooking cakes every day. We're not sure if Wu Dalang's baked cakes are profitable, but they are recorded in history. When Wu Song was going to go on business, he once instructed Wu Dalang that he would have to go for as much as two months or as little as forty or fifty days, and if he sold ten cages of cooking cakes every day, he could only make five cages from tomorrow.
Wu Song stays at his eldest brother's house, so he needs to spend an extra person and sell five more cages of cooking cakes to make ends meet. This means that if Wu Dalang is judged by the subsistence line of 100 yuan per day, his daily income should be about 200 yuan.
Therefore, Wu Dalang's salary income is two hundred yuan per day, according to one or two silver is one thousand yuan, and the approximate purchase rate of one or two silver is about equal to five hundred to eight hundred yuan, so if you want to raise a full-time wife, it is also necessary to have about one hundred to one hundred and sixty yuan.
Fourth, the comparison between ancient and modern
Therefore, the standard of living in the Song Dynasty was still lower than that of modern times, and it was much better than now. After all, if a man now earns less than five thousand a day with an income of one hundred and six, it is basically impossible to support a full-time wife with this little money.
Moreover, there are too many categories of modern life costs, just by the cost of a day of work is definitely more than a hundred yuan, ten yuan for a breakfast in the morning, twenty yuan for a takeaway at noon, and twenty yuan for a takeaway in the evening. So it cost fifty dollars just to eat, and to drink milk tea, plus twenty dollars.
In addition, you need to commute to work, and sometimes you need to take a taxi, which costs another ten to twenty dollars. So a hundred bucks is really a bit less than enough to even go out with others.
If you want to support a full-time wife with this salary, it will be more expensive, not only multiplying the cost by two. But also need to buy a variety of cosmetics for the wife, now a random cosmetics, the price is more than two hundred, in addition to a variety of outdated and festive small gifts, the amount should also be more than five hundred per month.
Therefore, in comparison with ancient and modern times, we all laugh at Wu Dalang as a very embarrassing person, but in fact, Wu Dalang is a little more dashing than we may be. He doesn't need too much pressure in life, he can actually support himself, and he can also support a wife who doesn't do anything at all, but someone else's wife is still very beautiful.
It is also worth mentioning that in the historical records, Wu Dalang was a very handsome man, and Pan Jinlian was a rich lady. At that time, Pan Jinlian eloped with Wu Dalang for love, and Wu Dalang turned over and became a Qipin County Commander. Therefore, don't laugh at Wu Dalang anymore, or reflect on yourself.
epilogue
In summary, through the life of Wu Dalang, it is also possible to see the economic level of the people of the Song Dynasty in disguise. Don't look at the dynasty's foreign wars as a mess, and the performance is extremely poor, but the level of economic development of this dynasty has indeed reached an all-time high.
Although it is impossible to solve the people's subsistence line, anyone who is near the subsistence line can not only solve the problem of eating, wearing, living and traveling, but also basically solve the problem of wives, and even ensure that women do not go out at home. This is indeed enviable for modern men.
But we can't just envy unilaterally, but we should be more stimulated and work harder. Because even Wu Dalang can support a full-time wife, shouldn't we, the people of the new era, work harder?
Although the price level may be turned upside down now, there are now many more opportunities, there is the Internet, there is the Internet of Things, and there are many opportunities that can be seen everywhere. In this era of the rise of the flat land, we should not be willing to degenerate, we should seize the opportunity to create a better life, not even Wu Dalang.
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