Today's commercial housing is the Official Salt in the calendar year

There is a house deed on hand, written in the year 15, lunar July 4. Mr. Xu, a resident of Huangshan, Anhui province, bought a local villa. The villa covers an area of 5 mu and has three buildings and 28 bungalows, even with the ground, the flowers go to the silver texture 106 two.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were about 638 m² million RMB per mu, and 3190 m² million RMB per mu. Each house has about 15 m² square meters, 3 buildings and 28 bungalows, that is, 465 m² square meters. A villa like this can be placed in today's Beijing or Shanghai, and tens of millions cannot be bought, right? Even in Huangshan, the price must be more than 3 million, right? Mr. Xu spent only 106 RMB in silver.

How much is 106 silver? I still remember that in the summer of the 15th year, the price of rice in Anhui rose, and the price of rice sold per Dash was two yuan. At that time, the price was one or two yuan per bucket, indicating that one or two silver coins could be used to buy rice. In the Ming Dynasty, there were about 10.7 liters of rice in a bucket, and each litre of Rice weighed about 1.8. Therefore, each bucket of Rice weighed 20 kilograms of rice. At the market price of 1.6 yuan, it would cost 32 yuan to purchase, you need 160 yuan to buy 5 dashes. To sum up, one or two silver coins in Huangshan in the 15th year of the Chinese calendar are equivalent to 160 yuan today, and 106 Yuan is about 0.17 million yuan. Today, Qian said that buying a villa is not enough to buy a toilet in the villa.

I once suspected that Mr. Xu was a bully and he was always good at buying and selling villas at such a low price. Later, it was found that he was also a common citizen and he was not eligible to buy and sell. In addition, the house deed was clearly written: "three sides of the agreement, the value of silver one hundred land two. "Note that in addition to the buyer and the seller, there is also a man-in-the-middle to help estimate, and it is based on the" value ", that is, the market price.

So I came to the first conclusion: the price in the calendar year is very low.

In the 15th year of the Chinese calendar, people also bought a pound of salt in Huangshan, Anhui province, but spent three yuan in silver. The money is equivalent to 16 yuan, at that time, the price of salt per kilogram was 48 yuan. Today's iodine-based edible salt is sold for only one dollar per kilogram. Although the "Jin" in the Ming Dynasty was a little bigger than today, it only had 596 grams, and the weight was almost the same, but the price was dozens of times lower. So some people said with emotion: "Although there are filial sons and grandsons, do not pray for thin halogen to serve their own friends, you cannot do it either. "It means that the poor people cannot afford salt, and sometimes they want to season some salt in their food, but they cannot afford this filial piety.

So I come to the second conclusion: the salt in the calendar year is very expensive.

For the price in the calendar year, let's stay and talk about it later. Now let's discuss why salt was expensive at that time.

According to Mingshi's food and goods records, at that time, the official direction of "cookers" (farmers responsible for salt) to buy salt, each 400 catties only pay for one stone of rice. In the Ming Dynasty, the rice of Yishi weighed about 190 kilograms, and the cost was calculated as 1.6 yuan per kilogram. The official purchase of 304 catties of salt is 400 yuan, indicating that the cost of "cooking households" to produce each catty of salt will never exceed a dollar. But how can the salt price on the market soar to 48 yuan a pound?

-The problem lies in the system. Assume that you are a boss in the Chinese calendar year and want to sell salt in the wholesale market, you must go through the following procedure:

First, buy the next batch of food, ship it to the border military camp, get the proof from the officers, return to the salt producing area, and hand the proof to the Salt Transportation Department;

Second, the Salt Transportation Department will apply to the Nanjing department for a batch of blank "salt Guide", that is, the License for distributing salt;

Third, fill in the name of the Salt Shipping, cover the big print, and send it to you;

Fourth, you take the salt to guide the salt field, and then take the salt car to the Salt Department for inspection;

Fifth, the division of salt class checks and tells you where to sell the goods;

Sixth, you should go to the designated place to sell salt;

7. After the salt is sold out, the salt must be handed over to the local ZF.

It is necessary to add that the above procedures are not only troublesome, but also time-consuming, not only time-consuming, but also a lot of money. Due to the odd treatment of civil servants in the Ming Dynasty, the welfare of the relevant departments is not high, so they are waiting to return from other places. You take the initiative to send the door, they will naturally remind you in a drag-and-drop way, until you take the initiative to send the silver flowers into their pockets. It is said that in the early year of the hichina calendar, it takes at least two years for the salt merchants to deliver goods each time, long or even year 56. During this period, there will be a lot of clear or dark expenditures, which are not recorded in history. We only have to expand our imagination.

It can be seen that although the production cost of salt is very low, the cost of attaching it to the transportation and sales links is very astonishing. The salt-selling bosses have suffered such a big dumb loss, can we not increase the salt price to dozens of followers?

Some friends may say that at that time, the common people were really stupid. Since salt merchants set a high salt price, why don't they just open the salt merchants and go directly to the cookers? Cooking households produce salt for one pound, and we will give two yuan, so that the cooking households can make money and we can also eat cheap salt. This idea is good, but it is not realistic, because the Ming Dynasty implemented a very strict salt monopoly system. In addition to salt merchants holding licenses, other people cannot buy salt from cookers. Who dares to break this rule, when it is light, it is a battle. When it is heavy, it is cut down not only the buyer's head, but also the stove's head. You have to ask why, Ming Dynasty officials will explain: the salt bought from salt dealers is called official salt, and the salt bought from cookers is called Private Salt. Official Salt is expensive, but legal; private salt is cheap, but illegal. How can we do anything illegal? If you continue to ask: why is the Official Salt legal and the Private Salt illegal? I guess those leaders will give you a slap in the face.

In fact, legal or illegal issues are superficial issues, and economic interests are the core. In the later period of the 2.09 million s, the Ming Dynasty National Treasury (Taicang database) received an average of 1 million RMB per year, of which the direct revenue from salt monopoly accounted for more than RMB. In other words, it is precisely because people buy legal salt that they contribute nearly half of their fiscal revenue to the country. Therefore, the country should certainly advocate that everyone buy legal salt, although it is relatively expensive; prevent everyone from buying illegal salt, although it is relatively cheap. However, this is not a case.

It is applicable to the following statements: the official salt is protected by law. If a problem occurs after eating, the state will compensate you. The private salt is not protected by law, it does not have the right to transfer, sanction and benefit, nor can it go through the transfer procedures, so it is very risky to purchase ...... If you still swing around and try to rush to the salt market to buy cheap salt for the kitchen cooker, the department of the household and the local transshipment Department will issue a Notice to define the official salt as the product salt, identify the private salt as a small property salt, and then warn or forbid you to deal with the small property salt, although it is so cheap and there is no difference in quality and product salt.

Now let's talk about why the price is cheap for the 15th year of the Chinese calendar. The reason is very simple: At that time, the house was full of small property rights, while small property rights houses were always very cheap, just as small property rights salt was always very cheap.
From the perspective of national monopoly, the two are indeed comparable.
There are few monopoly types in ancient countries. One is salt and the other is iron. There is salt iron in the Western Han Dynasty. Currently there are many monopoly types in China, from the land, finance, oil, coal, iron and other minerals, communications, gas, tap water and so on. The current monopoly is more extensive and deeper.
As a national monopoly, it is always possible to keep pace with the times to meet the rigid needs of people. In ancient times, farming, eating, iron restricted agricultural tools, cooking utensils, and salt restricted the health of the body. Now that our society is developing, we have to limit it from a higher level and higher demand. In essence, it is the same.