After the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China government only promised to pay the last emperor Puyi who abdicated the throne 4 million yuan a year, and the Qing government had stopped issuing silver and lumi to the nobles of the Baqi Dynasty. For the Manchurian Baqi aristocracy, a large amount of fixed income that had been fixed for a long time suddenly came to naught, causing the former princes and aristocrats to lose their economic resources and fall into a situation of sitting on the mountain.
The loss of political power also caused the princes and nobles to lose a lot of opportunities to accept bribes. In the past, when there was power and power, hundreds of officials in the DPRK and China vied to greet each other and offer gold and silver treasures, but now Wang Ye has lost his power and has become a commoner, not only has no one to give gifts, but often in turn has to bribe the nouveau riche of the Republic of China in order to obtain the protection of the warlord government.
The princes and nobles of the Qing Dynasty all owned a large amount of land, and could collect huge land rent and various agricultural and sideline products from the tenants who cultivated these lands every year, and these lands were called "Zhuangdi", which were seized from the peasants in the early Qing Dynasty. After the Xinhai Revolution, the princes and aristocrats lost power, and the vast number of tenants and peasants took advantage of this opportunity to refuse to pay rent, and launched a struggle against rent and land grabbing, which resulted in the princes and nobles losing a huge amount of land rent income. Although Yuan Shikai issued a great presidential decree forcing the tenant peasants to pay the rent of the farm's grain and land, the vast number of tenants still resisted the rent and occupied the land, and since the princes and nobles could not receive the rent and silver, and the expenses in the royal palace were very large, they had to sell the farmland. Most of these estates were sold at bargain prices to landowners, bureaucrats and warlords.
In the Qing Dynasty, there were dozens of royal palaces in Beijing alone, and there were also many Baylor and Beizifu. The princes only had the right to use these residences, not ownership. In the Republican period, as soon as the Qing Dynasty fell, these mansions became the private property of the princes and nobles, together with a large amount of gold and silver jewelry, which could have allowed the children of the nobles to live a relatively prosperous life. However, because the descendants of the nobles are accustomed to a profligate and wasteful life, they still do not know how to save after there is no mercy, and they still talk about pomp and grandeur, resulting in a situation of sitting on the mountain and not being able to make ends meet, and finally can only rely on selling property to pass the day. In addition, some stewards and heads of the royal palace took the opportunity to steal the master's property, or swallow the rent silver, or steal the farmland, and the noble children were very cowardly and incompetent, resulting in a large loss of the royal mansion's property. The major royal palaces in Beijing quickly fell in just two or three decades.
The famous Rui Wang Mansion, during the Republic of China, reduced 7900 taels of silver and 1500 stone meters per year, and the land rent income also decreased sharply, and later the royal government sold the Zhuangdi Department in the northeast and Hebei, only sold 3 jiao and 5 cents per mu, although the fixed income was almost cut off, the expenses of the royal palace were even greater than in the Qing Dynasty. Because of all kinds of restrictions on the Baqi aristocracy in the past, it was forbidden to go out casually to make friends with ministers and feudal officials, did not have anything to do with relatives, and was not allowed to leave Beijing without reason.
Rui Wang Mansion
During the Republican period, these restrictions were gone, and the children of the nobility played more happily. Prince Rui Kuibin died in 1915, and his two sons, Zhongquan and Zhongming, who were in their 20s, were accustomed to living a life of spending time and drinking, and no one cared about Laozi after his death. In order to compare, the brothers spent a huge amount of money to build new houses and gardens, installed telephones in every room, added Western kitchens, and went out not by sedan car, but by carriage and car. The palace prepared two cars and eight carriages, and the family also bought a large number of foreign goods, which were very expensive. These two young masters often gamble outside the front door with a group of wealthy children. In 1919, the two brothers sold their villa in the western suburbs, took 20,000 yuan, and took the prostitute to Tianjin to play. After two days of work, even spending and gambling, the money was all gone.
Such a wanton squandering, throwing a lot of money, relying on the sale of property. Less than 10 years later, the family's valuable things were almost sold, so they borrowed money from pawning houses. After borrowing 100,000 yuan from more than 500 houses in the palace, it was not long before it was spent, so he had to sell more than 20 small houses where his family lived near the palace, and later sold all the buildings and woods in the ancestral cemetery.
In 1924, because he could not pay the interest on the loan, he was sued by creditors at the Jingshi Trial Hall, and the court sealed the house of the royal palace the following year. Originally, these houses could be sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan, enough to pay off the debt, but the cowardly and incompetent Zhongquan heard that the court had seized the house and property, and he was scared and hidden. The family also thought that with a seal, the house and things belonged to others, so they hurriedly moved and gave the car, carriage and other items in the house to the driver and coachman as wages. Only sixty or seventy carts of items were transported from the palace, and because there was nowhere to store them, they were temporarily stored in the pawnshop. More than 40 boxes of clothes were only issued for a ticket of more than 200 yuan. Ironically, these more than 40 boxes of clothes were left unattended later, so that two years later, these clothes were all dead and all owned by the pawnshop. The incompetence and laziness of the descendants of the princes and nobles is really surprising.
Prince Rui's descendants sold more than 1,000 mu of the tomb keeper's land to the grave watcher, for only 8 yuan per mu. After that, I relied on clothes and jewelry to mingle around. The dozen or so people who were originally hired could not afford to hire either. In 1931, because he was too poor to help, Zhongquan wanted to take the opportunity of moving spirits to take out the funeral jewelry in the ancestral coffin and sell it for money, but because of the uneven sharing of the loot with the county Yamen, he was denounced, and the court sentenced Zhongquan to 7 years in prison. He spent five years in prison and died in 1939. His three nephews have to make ends meet by setting up stalls. The once luxurious, rich and hot Rui Wang Mansion has been a complete defeat in less than 30 years.
During the Republican period, King Yixi of Qing withdrew from the political arena and settled in the Tianjin Concession for a long time. Yixi and his eldest son, Zaizhen, deposited large amounts of cash in various foreign banks in Dongjiaomin Lane, so that they could collect interest without being robbed by warlords. The father and son also made commercial investments and gave antiques and jewelry to some upstarts in the Republic of China to ensure the safety of their lives and property.
Yixi died of illness in 1917, and two years later the three Zaizhen brothers separated. In 1924, Zai Zhen moved to Tianjin, and invested in the commercial and hotel industries, and set up a new business company. He also used huge amounts of money to speculate in gold, dollars, and bought some stocks. After the three Zaizhen brothers moved to Tianjin, they left some servants to watch over the Qingwangfu in Beijing. In 1927, the nationalist Zhenwu set up his headquarters in Qingwangfu, and when he left a year later, he took all the furniture and items from the palace. During the Japanese occupation of Beijing, the Zaizhen brothers sold the Qingwangfu to the Japanese puppet North China Administrative Committee.
The usual life of Zaizhen's family is extremely luxurious, coupled with a group of wives and concubines, and a great addiction to opium, and the daily expenses of Qingwangfu are huge. During the Japanese occupation of Tianjin, Xinye Company's performance plummeted, and Zaizhen had to make a living by selling antiques, jewelry, and jade. In 1948, Zai Zhen died of illness in Tianjin.
Zai Zhen's third brother is also a playboy who eats, drinks, and gambles, and often loses one or two houses in one night in the casino. His wife, son, and daughter-in-law also ate, drank, played and smoked like him, and over the years, they squandered the hundreds of thousands of yuan of property they received when selling the royal palace, and then sold jewelry, jade, antiques, jewelry, and clothing, and finally fell into poverty and disease, and died in 1925. His two sons later made a living by picking up rags or begging from relatives and friends.
Among the children of the Baqi aristocracy during the Republican period, some died of hunger and cold, and some gradually embarked on the road of self-reliance. There is also the daughter of Prince Su, the well-known Jin Bihui, who defected to the Japanese warlord and turned into a Japanese spy Yoshiko Kawashima, who once served as a blessing in Beijing, and was sentenced to death in Beijing after the victory of the War of Resistance.
Yoshiko Kawashima