Imagine if you opened the long river of time and traveled back to ancient times, what kind of life would you enjoy there with the modern currency you had? Everyday food or fine clothes and fine food? From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Tang and Ming dynasties, the material abundance and price levels of each dynasty were very different. Take a trip across the road and see what your "modern banknotes" could buy in ancient times.
In the Qin Dynasty, what was in front of you was not a monetary salary, but a system of distribution in kind based on the title. Imagine if you were a political upstart in the Qin Dynasty, rising to the lowest rank, you would get about 1,475 kilograms of grain a year. And if you are ambitious to climb to the highest level of duke, you can earn quite a lot, up to 1,000 stone grain, which is converted into more than 100,000 yuan now.
In the Han Dynasty, wages were no longer monotonous, and you could enjoy official benefits in addition to food. For example, as a high-ranking official like Sangong, he can have an income of about 350 stone per month, which is about 10,000 catties per month when exchanged for the weight of modern grain. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emperor was even more generous, and officials began to have year-end bonuses. The salary of the highest class may reach 200,000 copper coins, which can be converted into modern currency, which is equivalent to about 200,000 yuan. At that time, if you went to a restaurant in the capital, it cost about 30 yuan, and the purchase of a property was only 70,000 yuan, and the monthly salary of ordinary people was about 200 yuan, compared with the income of high-ranking officials, the gap was obvious.
Looking at the Tang Dynasty, it was an era when the salary system was already mature. Even the lowest-ranking officials who are fledgling have an annual salary of fifteen or sixteen taels of silver, while officials of the fifth rank can get 30,000 yuan. A Tiance general like Li Shimin has a monthly salary of more than 100,000 yuan. If you carry that much silver taels with you, you may not even have time to pursue it, and the house is a thing of the past—so high, probably everyone has a considerable amount of savings.
Then in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang set a very low salary standard for officials in order to suppress corruption. However, even the relatively common horsemen had an annual income of forty taels of silver, equivalent to about 26,000 yuan, and at that time one tael of silver could buy 350 catties of rice. However, what makes ordinary people out of reach is the consumption of Qinglou, and the consumption of dozens of taels of silver is enough for them to work for several months.
So, traveling back in time and space to ancient times, can your income allow you to enjoy a good life, or just barely make a living? Can you live in fine clothes and fine food, or can you only seek stability in the ordinary? When you come back to your senses, you may be more grateful for the living conditions and opportunities given by modern society.