Home is the place where people's hearts and minds settle, and the first thing people do when they arrive in a strange place is to find a place to live and settle down.
It was the same in ancient times, whether it was a thatched hut or a private house, if you have a family, you will be stable.
So how did the ancients settle down?
Is it just a matter of finding a piece of land and building a small room?
It is not easy for the ancients to settle down, and in our impression, the ancient land was vast and sparsely populated, and it should be very simple to settle down.
In fact, in ancient times, there was a system to follow for the management of land and houses, and it was not possible to build houses casually.
Especially for ordinary people, it is already good to be able to take care of life and eat and drink.
Most of the ancients lived a farming life, and the villagers faced the loess with their backs to the sky all year round, but they couldn't earn much money.
And most of their houses were built by themselves.
The main way for modern people to settle down is to buy commercial housing from developers, as long as they have money and meet the conditions for buying a house.
Although there was no such mature commercial housing in ancient times, it required the ownership of land.
It can be understood that modern people buy houses, and the ancients need to buy land.
The farmers guard a large field, can't they spare a few square meters of land to build a hut as their home?
Obviously, no, although the farmers are responsible for sowing the seeds, the ownership of the land generally does not belong to them.
The real owners of these lands were actually the landlords and aristocrats, and the common people rarely had their own land.
Without land, we can't build houses on it, so we don't have to envy the ancients anymore.
It is not so simple for them to build a house and settle down.
And this is still in the remote countryside, it is not easy to settle down, if you want to have a house of your own in the city, it is even more difficult.
In film and television dramas, it is common to see those woodcutters or hunters bringing their things to the city early in the morning to sell.
Some of them leave for half a day, but they don't have a home in the city, don't they want to?
It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't help it, I don't have enough economic strength to support it, and it's just whimsical to want to settle down in the city.
Don't say it's them, even some former nobles and big families, once they are down, they can only settle down in the countryside.
Then enjoy the old age in peace, on the one hand, it is to return to the roots, and on the other hand, it is also to consider the cost of settling in the city.
Especially in the capital, where land is more expensive, most people will not be able to buy their own land there in their lifetime.
Some people who work in the capital, if they don't have too much money, most of them can only send people to the fence, or some directly take the unit as their home, and clothing, food, housing and transportation are inseparable from the unit.
But once they reach a certain age, they will face retirement, and the house in the unit will not be able to live in at that time.
They still have to choose to settle down again, and they have worked here all their lives, but they rarely make a home here.
Maybe the money you earn in your lifetime is not enough to buy a house here, and most people's choice at this time is to return to their ancestral home in the countryside.
If you have spare money in your hand, you can renovate it, and if you are a little poor, you can make do with it and live there.
In the Tang Dynasty, the ** of land and houses ushered in a large-scale price increase, and the capital was full of sky-high houses.
At this time, even those who worked in the capital did not have to live outside the city, and they had to go in and out of the city every day to "go to work", which was time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Although it is hard work, there is no other way, and many people feel that the huge city has no place to stay.
People's meager income is not enough to support the family, let alone spend a lot of spare money to buy a property, which is unthinkable.
These can be seen in the golden sentences of some great poets.
There are also some people with reasonable incomes and some fame who will take out their own family resources and borrow some from relatives and friends in order to make a face, and try their best to settle down in the city.
Now when we buy a house, we either buy it from a developer or we need to learn from a real estate agent.
So was there such an "intermediary" in ancient housing transactions?
That naturally exists, and at the beginning this kind of person who resembled a modern real estate agent was called "Fang Ya".
And the fundamental reason why they can gain a foothold is because of the official seal they hold in their hands, and the transaction with this seal has legitimacy.
After all, the purchase and sale of a house is not a small business, and the buyer still has to get a guarantee after spending so much money.
But people don't work in vain, and they still have to charge some fees in the middle.
This is also easy to understand, and the transaction contract with the official seal is naturally protected by the government.
However, this "intermediary fee" is not something that everyone is willing to pay, and if you skip the room and trade privately, you can really save a lot of expenses.
Therefore, it is natural that there are people who trade privately, but their transactions do not get the seal of the government.
Without this official seal, the contract becomes a "white contract".
Naturally, the government will not support these "white deeds", but they will not spend time and effort to track them down.
It is still necessary to hand it over to Fang Ya and let them investigate it themselves, and if they can successfully report and expose, they can also get a certain reward.
Correspondingly, if Fang Ya neglects his duties and ignores the "white deed", he will deal with them if he is found out by the government.
There are more than 130 original contracts in Nanjing, and the name of "Fangya" can be clearly identified from these contracts.
And these signatures are all written by their own hands, and only this kind of housing transaction with an official seal and a "house tooth" will be regarded as a legitimate transaction.
The above content will write the information of the buyer and seller very clearly, as well as the ** of the transaction, the location of the house.
Even the names of some of the Witnesses will appear on it, which is also to prevent future denials.
With this clear contract, it is clear that even lawsuits will be filed in the future, and there will be no trouble in dealing with disputes.
Since the day of the house, the government has also saved a lot of trouble, but at first it was not clear about their management and division of responsibilities.
Negligence in management will naturally lead to mistakes, so in the changes of various dynasties, the fang teeth have gradually become perfect.
By the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Fangya's behavior was no longer entirely an individual act, but was subject to the supervision and jurisdiction of the government.
It can be seen from the contracts left by the Qing Dynasty that the details of the housing transaction are quite in place, and the format of the contract is also very standardized.
In each transaction, Fang Ya witnesses and supervises on behalf of the government, and their work is not completed until the transaction is completed and the official seal is stamped.
Later, in order to facilitate management, the government also divided specific areas for Fangya, and as long as the housing transactions occurred in this area, they needed to be carried out by their hands.
This also greatly standardizes the workflow of atrial teeth and clarifies the division of responsibilities.
This also makes the work of atrial teeth more standardized.
At that time, if you could mix up a house, you could be regarded as holding an iron rice bowl, as long as you don't make mistakes, there is no big problem in retirement.
During the Tang Dynasty, the imperial court's management of the family and population was relatively formal.
They will conduct a comprehensive count and census, and every household will be recorded, and the house will be counted.
If you want to buy or sell a house, you must first go through the nod of the government, otherwise it is an illegal act, and the government will give corresponding punishments.
At that time, if people wanted to sell their houses, they had to go through not only the government and the house, but also the opinions of their neighbors, relatives and friends.
If the neighbors insist that they don't agree, it will be difficult for the deal to go ahead.
Of course, this system did not exist from the Tang Dynasty, as early as the Western Han Dynasty, there was this provision.
At that time, the transaction of the house was inseparable from the neighborhood, but at that time, if you were the seller of the house, once the deal was made, you would not be able to apply for a "homestead" again.
This means that you will be homeless in the future, and the person who buys the house must also be a neighbor, because the rule is that you can only buy an adjacent house.
It seems that in ancient times, it was not easy for people to settle down, and it was even more difficult to some extent.