In some costume TV series, there are often such scenes, some people eat at roadside stalls, order two steamed buns and a bowl of soup, and start with a few silver when checking out; some young masters of large families go to the gambling ground to play a circle, and as a result, they lose more than a thousand silver at a time. It is because there are always such shots that appear repeatedly, leading many people to misunderstand the value of one or two silver in ancient times, as if one or two pieces of silver in ancient times were only equivalent to dozens of dollars or even a few yuan now.
However, if there are really directors and screenwriters with historical skills, there will definitely be no absurd storylines above, because according to historical records, the income of the national treasury during the Ming Dynasty was only 2 million taels, and if ordinary people eat an ordinary meal, they will spend a few silver or two, then it is not a slap in the face of the royal treasury revenue. So, how much is one or two pieces of silver in ancient times equivalent to today???????
The classic image of ancient silver - yuanbao
To understand the true value of one or two pieces of silver, it is necessary to explore this question in different historical stages, because the value of silver and silver currencies varied from dynasty to dynasty. Since this is the case, it is necessary to convert the value of the two currencies in the same way as the currency is equivalent to the reference. For China, which has been a big agricultural country since ancient times, rice is an indispensable commodity for people's livelihood that has remained unchanged for thousands of years, so the author will take rice as a reference commodity to obtain several representative silver prices of the era.
Silver in the TV series
Before the Tang and Song dynasties, because silver was not a universal currency, it did not make much sense to calculate the two values of silver before that. According to historical records, silver gradually entered the stage of circulating currency during the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, when one or two silver could buy 200 buckets of rice, because 10 buckets of rice was a stone, one stone was equal to the current 59 kilograms, that is to say, one or two silver could buy the current 1180 kilograms of rice. In today's society, the average price of rice is basically maintained at about 1.75 yuan a catty, from which it can be deduced that one or two pieces of silver in the early years of the Tang Dynasty are equivalent to 4130 yuan.
The strongest hard currency of antiquity was rice
Let's talk about the Song Dynasty, according to the "History of the Song Dynasty" record: "rice stone is only six or seven hundred", "each bucket of money is 30 yuan" can be seen, the price of rice in the Song Dynasty is about maintained between 600 and 300 yuan of a bucket of rice, then, one or two silver can buy 4 to 8 stones of rice. Since the weight of a stone of rice in the Song Dynasty was about 66 kilograms, the purchasing power of one or two pieces of silver was between about 924 and 1848. Before reading Jin Yong's "Biography of the Archery Hero", I still remember that Huang Rong invited Guo Jing to dinner, and spent a total of more than 19 taels at checkout, compared with the purchasing power of the real Song Dynasty silver, the situation of spending 19 taels for a meal would not have happened in the Song Dynasty.
Ancient silver
During the Ming Dynasty, the value of one or two pieces of silver began to be greatly reduced. According to the data of the Ming Dynasty, at that time, one or two silver could buy two stones of rice, and the weight of one stone of rice was about 94.4 kilograms, that is to say, one or two silver could buy 188.8 kilograms of rice, and the average price of Rice in China was still 1.75 yuan, that is to say, the purchasing power of one or two silver in the Ming Dynasty was equivalent to 660.8 yuan now.
The value of silver during the Qing Dynasty was lower than that of the Ming Dynasty, due to the influx of a large number of overseas silver into China in the late Qing Dynasty, resulting in a significant depreciation of the value of silver in China, and the purchasing power of one or two silver was only one-third of that of one or two silver in the Ming Dynasty, which can be calculated that in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the value of one or two silver was only equivalent to more than 200 yuan now. In summary, the two values of silver in each period are completely different, and it is necessary to judge them in combination with the actual situation.