Tang Dynasty Crossing Guide: Chang'an and People's Life Manual

Chapter 28 Attention comrades who intend to enter the political world (1)
Scaring you to death is not worth your life, Qin Qiong and Jingde's door gods are paid
civil service income

After watching the difficult time-traveling women's life in Tang Dynasty, do you think it would be much better to time-travel as a man?Not necessarily, not necessarily.

Indeed, we have talked about a lot of money-burning items such as food and clothing, tourism scenery, entertainment industry, and sports in the Tang Dynasty.But after enjoying it, should you seriously consider making money?Even if you are the second generation of officials or the second generation of rich people, there will always be a day when you can sit and eat, isn't it?
What kind of job paid the best in the Tang Dynasty?Of course, it is the ever-changing civil servant test, and the official will hold the iron rice bowl.

In order to refresh you, before talking about work, let’s talk about the income of civil servants in the Tang Dynasty.

Looking forward to it, looking forward to it, the autumn wind is coming, and the day of salary payment is approaching.Hurry up and ask the family servants to clear the warehouse, dump the bottom of the warehouse, and wash the rice vat. It is best to ask others for a few cats to raise and catch mice. If there are no cats, you can invite the snake fairy to come.What is this for, you ask?Oh, didn't I say, are you going to get paid?
What does salary payment have to do with warehouse rice tanks?Uh, what do you think your salary is going to be?banknotes?bullion?The numbers on the bank account?Or is it the silver ticket that has been in use for thousands of years in all costume dramas from the Tang Dynasty of Yao, Shun and Yu to the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China?
Alas, the Bailan Tianlei costume drama kills people.Listen carefully, you, a civil servant in the Tang Dynasty, get your salary once a year (yes, once a year, not every month), and most of it is white rice.There may also be some places that can only distribute millet, rice or other grains due to natural and geographical conditions, but they must be converted according to a certain ratio, and the value of the grains distributed must be equivalent to the value of so many rice in other places.

In short, the salary is mainly food, and most of the food is paid after the autumn harvest, when the food has been put into storage. One time the food is enough to feed your family for a whole year.Therefore, before receiving wages, you must prepare space and containers for storing a large amount of food in your home.

You ask how many rice tanks are enough?It depends on what kind of official you are. After all, salaries are paid according to the level and position.If you have good political performance and get promoted repeatedly, your salary will also rise accordingly.

When you first became an official, you wore two official titles, namely "Jiang Shilang" and "Secretary Provincial School Secretary".Then here comes the problem, "Jiang Shilang" is a low-ranking "loose official" from the ninth rank, and "Secretary Provincial School Secretary Lang" is a senior official from the ninth rank. Yours At what level should the salary be paid?
Is it high or low?You are beautiful.Remember, among the various salary items in the Tang Dynasty, the most important "lumi", "monthly salary" and the early "strength class" are all calculated and issued according to the rank of "sanguan".Therefore, the system of "sanguan" is often called "jiluguan", which means that this official title has no actual work to do, and it is purely used to indicate income and treatment.

You have just become an official, and of course you start to calculate your salary from the lowest level of "down from the ninth rank".So, how much rice can you get a year?The central government of the Tang Dynasty had unified and clear regulations on Lumi officials at all levels. Let’s look at two tables.

The Lumi that Tang Dynasty Beijing officials can get every year is as follows:

700 stones for first-rank officials, 600 stones for first-rank officials; 500 stones for second-rank officials, 460 stones for second-rank officials; 400 stones for third-rank officials, 360 stones for third-rank officials; 300 stones for fourth-rank officials, 260 stones for fourth-rank officials; 200 stones for fifth-rank officials, 160 stones for fifth-rank officials; 100 stones for sixth-rank officials, 90 stones for sixth-rank officials; 80 stones for seventh-rank officials, 70 stones for seventh-rank officials; 67 stones for eighth-rank officials, 62 stones for eighth-rank officials 57 stones; 52 stones for nine-rank officials, [-] stones for nine-rank officials.

The above is the salary table for an official in Chang'an, the capital city.If you are an official in a place outside the capital, it will be a little bit worse, and your salary will be about 10% lower than that of a Beijing official of the same level.

The Lumi that foreign officials of the Tang Dynasty can get every year is as follows:

650 stones for first-rank officials, 550 stones for first-rank officials; 470 stones for second-rank officials, 430 stones for second-rank officials; 370 stones for third-rank officials, 330 stones for third-rank officials; 280 stones for fourth-rank officials, 240 stones for fourth-rank officials; 180 stones for fifth-rank officials, 140 stones for fifth-rank officials; 95 stones for sixth-rank officials, 85 stones for sixth-rank officials; 75 stones for seventh-rank officials, 65 stones for seventh-rank officials; 64.5 stones for eighth-rank officials, 59.5 stones for eighth-rank officials 54.5 stones; 49.5 stones for nine-rank officials, [-] stones for nine-rank officials.

Compare the above table and see, you, the "General Shilang" who is an official in Chang'an, can receive 52 shi of rice a year. How much is 52 shi of rice?Don't worry, this is not all your income for a year. There are still several benefits, bonuses and allowances that you can claim.

Your second largest income item is called "job field".

"Working land" is the land given by the imperial court to officials, allowing them to hire farmers to plant the land, and rent the land themselves as wage subsidies.The number of job fields is of course distributed according to the rank of the official, but this is not calculated according to the rank of "loose official", but according to the rank of "official officer".

The number of job fields is also different for Beijing officials and local officials at the same level, but this time it is reversed.Because there are many warehouses in the capital and less arable land per capita, there are relatively few job fields for Beijing officials.However, there is a lot of idle farmland in the local area, so the local officials are allocated more job fields, which can just subsidize the psychological imbalance of Nalumi.

The list of Beijing official positions is as follows:
1200 mu of the first-rank official, 1000 mu of the second-rank official, 900 mu of the third-rank official, 700 mu of the fourth-rank official, 600 mu of the fifth-rank official, 400 mu of the sixth-rank official, 350 mu of the seventh-rank official, 250 mu of the eighth-rank official, and 200 mu of the ninth-rank official mu.

The list of positions for foreign officials is as follows:
(There are no first-rank officials in local offices) 1200 mu for second-rank officials, 1000 mu for third-rank officials, 800 mu for fourth-rank officials, 700 mu for fifth-rank officials, 500 mu for sixth-rank officials, 400 mu for seventh-rank officials, 300 mu for eighth-rank officials, and 250 mu for ninth-rank officials. Pinguan [-] acres.

Your clerk is the "Secretary Provincial School Secretary", who is a ninth-rank upper-ranker and can be allocated 200 acres of land.However, let me ask you, can you plant these 200 acres of land by yourself?can't you?It must be rented out to the landlord, so how much rent can you collect in a year?

唐朝廷规定，职田收租不能超过每年每亩6斗粟。就按一年1亩田6斗粟来算，您这项收入是1200斗（120石）粟子。

For your convenience in calculating your total income for the year, we'd better convert all your income into rice.According to the official price comparison of the Tang Dynasty, 2 shi of millet = 3 shi of rice = 1.2 shi of rice, and 120 shi of millet = 72 shi of rice in the field.

Look, your professional income is more than that of Lumi, do you feel encouraged?Don't worry, there's more to come.

Your third largest income item is called "monthly salary".

The "monthly salary" is more troublesome, because at the beginning, it mainly distributed meat and fish, fruits and vegetables, soap, shampoo, pens, inks, papers and inkstones, etc. Of course, money was also distributed.Later, everyone felt that it was most appropriate to distribute money (as the commodity economy developed better and better, and it became more and more convenient to buy things with money), so the imperial court also formulated a regulation, stipulating that it should be distributed to officials according to their ranks every month. Money or something equivalent to that much money.

The monthly salary income of Beijing officials is as follows:
11 guan coins for first-rank officials, 9 guan coins for second-rank officials, 6 guan coins for third-rank officials, 4.2 guan coins for fourth-rank officials, 3.6 guan coins for fifth-rank officials, 2.4 guan coins for sixth-rank officials, 2.1 guan coins for seventh-rank officials, and 1.85 guan coins for eighth-rank officials 1.5 pennies, nine rank officials [-] pennies.

According to your "Jiang Shilang" rank of nine official officials, the welfare money you can receive every month is about 1.5 guan, so you can receive 18 guan in a year.

If you want to convert the money into rice, how much rice can you buy with 18 guan?

据说唐代中叶（开元天宝年间）正常的米价是斗米20钱，石米200钱，但是贞观四年（632）以后，似乎一直到高宗前期，20多年间米价都在极低的情况下运行，贞观四年斗米3～4钱，贞观八九年（636—637）斗米4～5钱，贞观15年（643）斗米2钱，高宗永徽五年（654）斗米4钱，麟德三年（666）斗米5钱……目前暂且算初唐平均斗米10钱吧？1石=10斗，1000文钱=1贯，也就是说1贯钱=10石米。

18 sticks x 10 shi meters = the annual income of the monthly salary is 180 shi meters, which is more than the combined income of lumi and employment!

As for the monthly salary of local officials, we will not go into details.Because the monthly salary of local officials in the early days was basically determined by the amount of local fiscal revenue, officials at the same level, because of their different regions, had a very large gap in welfare income.

Your fourth income, which is also the last major income as a low-level official, is called "Li Ke".

This thing may make you feel a little uncomfortable, because the content of this income is the labor service of a living strong man.

In the Tang Dynasty, in addition to farming the land and paying rent and food every year, the males of the common people also theoretically had to serve in the military, that is, they worked for the government for free.Going to the homes of officials to see the nursing home, standing guard and sentry, and serving as guards when officials go out, is also one of the contents of their hard labor.

The men who serve these labors are called Fangge, Shufu, Baizhi, Zhiyi, etc. according to their rank and position. For the sake of simplicity, we will call them "servants".

The number of servicemen provided by the Tang Dynasty Beijing officials is as follows:

96 first-rank officials, 72 second-rank officials, 48 ​​third-rank officials, 32 fourth-rank officials, 24 fifth-rank officials, 15 sixth-rank officials, four seventh-rank officials, three eighth-rank officials, and two ninth-rank officials people.

The official ranks here were counted as "loose officials" before Emperor Gaozong of Tang Dynasty, but after Gaozong was counted as "official officials".So you, a ninth-rank casual official and ninth-rank minister, still have two free guards available every year.

According to our rules, guards are also converted into rice.You ask what is the price comparison between human meat and rice?This is too harsh, it's not like that.

These men who were supposed to serve in the military would rather pay a sum of money to finish the job if they couldn't spare because of family affairs, or if they simply didn't want to be humbled by others to look after their homes.We call this money "Li Ke".This kind of situation is allowed by the government, and the official price is also given, which is to pay a little more than 200 yuan per month, so let's count it as 200 yuan.

So if your two guards equipped at public expense don't come to work for a year, your family will have an income of 4.8 yuan this year.Calculated on the basis of 1 guanqian = 10 shi rice, 48 shi rice will be obtained.

Alright, now that the main income of middle and low-level officials is finished, let's do the math, how much rice can you, a little Tang Dynasty nine-rank sesame official, receive in total in a year?How much is it converted into RMB?
禄米52石+职田收入72石+月俸180石+力课48石=全年总收入352石大米。

According to the research of modern scholars, one stone of rice in the Tang Dynasty was equivalent to about 1 catties of rice in modern times.So, you have to be prepared. To receive a year's salary, you have to move nearly 85 catties of rice home...

If the current market price of rice is about 1 yuan per catty of rice, you, the smallest official in the Tang Dynasty, have an annual salary of nearly 2 yuan and a monthly income of 6 yuan.How does it feel?
What?You ask how much was the income of the largest official in the Tang Dynasty?It's hard to say.First of all, the emperor's family is not included, right?Then, the family properties of Yang Guozhong and Li Linfu, the big corrupt officials and treacherous officials, are not easy to calculate.How about this, let's count as two well-known upright and good officials, such as the two door gods posted by your family during the Chinese New Year.

After the Yuan Dynasty, the popularity of the two ancient door gods, Shentu and Yulei, was gradually divided by the more secular Shubao and Jingde.Let's briefly talk about the income of the two founding fathers, Qin Qiong and Yuchi Jingde, when they worked for His Majesty Li Shimin.

First, let’s expose the highest official positions that they have obtained in their lifetime. Jingde is Wu Guogong, Shishi has 1300 households (nobility), Kaifu Yitong Sansi (sanguan), Youwuhou General (three-rank official) ).Qin Qiong is the Duke of Yi State, with 700 households sealed by Shishi (nobility), Shangzhu State (honored officer or scattered official), and General Zuo Wuwei (a third-rank official).

Then let's go find their Lumi grades.

Don't worry, take a closer look at the official titles of the two of them. Compared with your ninth-rank sesame official, is there something more?
Middle and low-level officials like you may only wear the titles of "casual officials" and "service officials".But like the founding fathers of the two door gods, the most senior bureaucrats and nobles, it is very likely that there will be two more official titles.

One is called "June", which is "Wu Guogong" of Jingde and "Yi Guogong" of Qin Qiong.This mainly reflects bloodlines, such as the king conferred by the princes, and the princess conferred by the concubine's daughters, they are all considered "conferred titles".It is not easy for courtiers with different surnames to get a title. Generally, if they reach the level of "Duke of the State", the title will come to an end.

Moreover, there may not necessarily be economic benefits with being knighted, it depends on the sentence "Food seals N households" followed by the two door gods' knighting.There is no "real food seal", only false seals, and you can't get a penny, it's purely a certificate of honor.

What is "Shi Shi Feng"?That is, the imperial court set aside dozens or hundreds of households in certain areas, stipulating that these households should have paid taxes to the government (in the Tang Dynasty, there were three types of rent, Yong, and Tiao), and transferred them to the nobles as their income.Under normal circumstances, the maximum number of food seals for royal princes is no more than 1000, princesses only have 300 to 600 households, Jingde's 1300 households, and Qin Qiong's 700 households are considered top food seals in the entire Tang Dynasty.

In fact, even with the minimum of 50 households, the annual income is higher than the full salary of first-rank officials.Therefore, the Tang Dynasty stipulated that if you have a "food seal", then the two items of Lumi and Job Field will no longer be issued to you. If you want to eat more and occupy more, there must be a limit.

Then let's take a look at the income of the two door gods Shishifeng.

The Zuyong regulation in the early Tang Dynasty required each adult man (D) to pay the state a tax of 2 stones of millet or 3 stones of rice every year. Pay three feet of silk per day); adjust according to the local production, silk, silk, two feet each, cloth plus one-fifth.Those who transport silk, silk, and cotton will also adjust 3 liang of cotton; those who transport cloth will receive 3 catties of hemp.

If the above miscellaneous things are converted into rice, according to the research of modern scholars (Li Jinxiu's "Financial History Draft of the Tang Dynasty"), the men in the Zhenguan period had to pay the equivalent of 15 shi of rice every year.

另外，唐朝那些“食实封”的米虫，在挑选自己的“封户”时，都是拼命挑那些男丁多的家庭，据说至少是“三丁以上”。就按每户三个男丁算吧，敬德每年1300户的收入是：15×3×1300=5.85万石大米；秦琼每年700户的收入是：15×3×700=3.15万石大米。

Then the two of them can also receive monthly salary and strength lessons.

According to the table we listed above, Jingde's "Kaifu Yitong Sansi" is a loose official from the first rank, who can receive a monthly salary of 132 yuan per year, which is 1320 stones per meter; Counting, it is the second grade, with a monthly salary of 108 guanqian and 1080 shi for rice.

In the strength class, Jingde's annual income is 230 guanqian = 2300 shimi, and Qin Qiong's is 1728 shimi.

This is not over yet, for these top military generals with senior "Honored Officers" (Shangzhu Kingdom), there is another big income from strength lessons, which is called "marriage, account" lesson money.These "marriages and tents" are also names for free guards, but these guards are generally the children of high-ranking officials, and "marriages and tents" as senior officials is one of the ways for them to enter the officialdom, so it is impossible to quit of.But the young and old are always reluctant to stand guard.The old way, pay money to redeem yourself.Also because they are all the children of high-ranking officials, they have plenty of oil and water, so the money they pay is really a lot, and this money has become a big source of income for the "marriage and account" officials, which cannot be ignored.

(End of this chapter)