What can i buy for a dollar?
Two lollipops? A packet of spicy strips? In today's rapid economic development, a dollar may only be enough to buy some snacks that children love to eat, but in the Republic of China period more than a hundred years ago, a dollar can be said to be a huge amount of money.
During the Republic of China period, we are more accustomed to calling it silver dollar or ocean, and the main raw material required for casting is silver. Although the current price of silver is only five or six yuan a gram, but at that time the silver technology was not particularly developed, silver in the Republic of China is a precious metal. Therefore, first of all, from the perspective of raw materials, the purchasing power of silver dollars in the Republic of China should not be underestimated.
So what can a silver dollar with a face value of 1 yuan buy in the Republic of China? We can first look at the prices in Shanghai from 1911 to 1920: about three and four minutes per kilogram of rice, about one dime per kilogram of pork, about six cents per kilogram of sugar, and one to two cents per kilogram of salt, so it seems that a silver dollar can buy a lot of things, you can buy 30 kilograms of rice or 8 kilograms of pork, which can almost meet the food use of a family for a month.
Maybe many friends began to calculate, a pound of rice is about 8 yuan, then a silver dollar converted to the current purchasing power is about 240 yuan, which is not a lot. It is true that this is true when measured purely by rice, but the rice production in the Republican period was completely different from that of now, and there was no state macro-control over grain prices at that time, and the value of rice as a necessity for people's livelihood at that time should be much higher.
How much money can the purchasing power of a silver dollar measure now? After more than a hundred years of spectacular waves, it will be very difficult to get an accurate result, but we can get a glimpse of it from some other angles.
In Beijing in the 1920s, a courtyard with nearly ten rooms, the monthly rent was only about 20 yuan, according to Lu Xun's record in the diary, he once rented three rooms with a monthly rent of 8 yuan, the monthly salary of the hired maid was only 3 yuan, and then Lu Xun used the writing fee to buy a courtyard containing a small garden in Beijing, and only spent more than 3,000 yuan. From the perspective of house prices, the purchasing power of a silver dollar can be worth the current ten thousand pieces, haha.
After talking about the house, what about the car? Cars have appeared in a variety of film and television literature works, Lao She's novel "Camel Xiangzi", Xiangzi's dream of a top rickshaw is also in the early 100s; and in the film and television drama "Latent", the famous Stipunk brand car, according to the price of the car at that time, is about three thousand yuan. You don't even understand this? It's the kind of thing Chennault sits on
Today's article will go here first, welcome to like and forward ~ If you have any views, you can discuss and communicate with Xiao Zhao in the comment area
I am Xiao Zhao, an appraiser who loves mechanism coins, welcome to follow me, free of charge for fans and friends to identify the silver yuan in the home Oh ~