Maybe everyone has heard of how corrupt and wasteful the life of Cixi at the end of the Qing Dynasty was, but how many people can't say, some people have calculated that she spent about 150 million taels**, how did these money be spent, I will take you to start with "food, clothing, housing and transportation", to see how much disaster a poor and luxurious Cixi brought to the suffering people at that time.
According to Deling's book "Two Years by Cixi's Side", once Cixi was going to go on a long trip, she brought a whole train of clothes, including more than 2,000 pieces of clothes and thirty or forty pairs of shoes. And these clothes accounted for only one-thirtieth or forty-tenth of all the clothes of Cixi.
Empress Dowager Cixi's dragon robe.
Cixi, like all women, loved clothes, and she never threw away the clothes she wore them, but she kept them in her closet, and there were many large wooden boxes with red lacquer in her wardrobe, and every three pieces of clothing were placed in a box, and the boxes contained her clothes of all ages, like a museum storehouse.
Not only did she like to collect, but every four or five days, she had to look at all her clothes, and the eunuchs walked in front of Cixi with large wooden plates, and perhaps in Cixi's eyes, these clothes represented her previous life.
Cixi's meal consists of three meals a day + pastries and drinks.
She has to fill three or four tables for each meal, including hot and cold dishes, barbecue grill food, and all kinds of snacks. Cixi asked for 120 dishes per meal, and it was a new 120 dishes. Even if you go out to visit the lake, you have to have 120 dishes, or usual, and when you meet the New Year's ancestors, you have to have 120 dishes from heaven, earth and people.
Then there are pastries, Cixi snacks love to eat small nest head and stinky tofu. In the event of important festivals, such as the Chung Yeung Festival, the Imperial Dining Room also makes additional offerings for making chrysanthemums, jujube paste, eight treasures and other flower cakes.
There is also drinking, Cixi loves to drink flower tea, and the water she uses to make tea is the spring water transported from Yuquan Mountain that day; The flower tea drunk is freshly picked flowers, mixed into dry tea and then brewed into the tea cup, drinking has both tea and floral aroma. When drinking tea, the two eunuchs held the saucer in front of Cixi with both hands, and exclaimed: "Lafayette has tasted tea!" ”。
Cixi also changed several residences in her life, and the more famous one is Chuxiu Palace. This is not only the place where Cixi gave birth to her son, but also the residence where she lived for a long time in her old age, it can be said that this palace is a very important place for Cixi in the Forbidden City. In Cixi's bedroom, whether it is the curtain or the futon, or the Western-style vanity mirror on the table, all of them are bright and dazzling, and they are not something that ordinary people can see.
In the corner of the house, there is a large vat of bright colors, the purpose of which is to put the seasonal fruits of the four seasons, which are not used to eat, but are placed in the vat, and the fragrance of the fruit is used to smoke the house. According to the Qing Dynasty's "Flower Glass", "only citron Qingfen attacks people, and can clear the confession for several months on the desk". Empress Dowager Cixi has more than 158,000 apples a year alone.
A large vat of fruits.
In addition to the emperor's opinion, phoenix chariot, and imperial boat, Cixi also has modern means of transportation. For example, Toyo cars, trains, automobiles, and so on. Cixi often travels in Oriental cars, "the car is exquisitely made." Its handle is coiled with two golden dragons, making a look of revelation. The second wheel is made of rubber, light and fluent, and it has never been seen before. One eunuch dragged him in front, and another eunuch pushed him backward and forward. The Queen Mother sat in it and thought it was very fast", but unfortunately, Cixi still felt that it was not comfortable to take a sedan chair.
Cixi also had a special train, and even laid a light track in the Forbidden City, starting at the entrance of the palace gate and ending outside Cixi's dormitory. Cixi had many cars, no less than a dozen. One of them was yellow, painted with a double dragon and a throne in a glass room, which was Cixi's "Royal No. 1", but she never sat on it, and the reason why she did not sit was that the driver of the car had to sit on Cixi's side, but in terms of Chinese tradition, this is very disrespectful!
Cixi strolls in the Summer Palace on a snowy day.
Of course, Cixi's luxurious life is far more than that, according to the memories of the last chief eunuch of the Qing Dynasty: the Empress Dowager Cixi had to spend **40,000 taels per day just for living expenses; Take a bath to use more than 100 towels made of golden silk threads, and the jewelry she prepared for herself on her 60th birthday is **10,000 taels, **380,000 taels; It cost **230,000 taels to buy clothes; The decoration of the road through which the Summer Palace returned to the Forbidden City cost 2.4 million taels**, and the cost **10 million taels. The construction of the Summer Palace cost 30 million taels**.
Cixi's group photo at the Summer Palace.
After the death of the Empress Dowager Cixi, her funeral was even more beautiful and grand, the funeral goods included all kinds of gold, silver and jade, rare treasures, according to the valuation at that time, it was estimated that hundreds of millions of taels were huge, of course, these burials were finally cheaper than the great warlord Sun Dianfang, and Cixi's bones were also dug up and exposed to the wild.
Empress Dowager Cixi went to the funeral.
Cixi went to the funeral. Cixi's extravagance, of course, is not only these, but also only these, it is already appalling, this is not sucking blood, this is bloodletting, you know, at that time, the price of British and German advanced warships was about 250,000 taels**, if you take out this money and use it to buy**, it is trivial to run rampant in Asia.
It's a pity that history can't be if, sad, lamentable!
February** Dynamic Incentive Program