In fact, before the Ming Dynasty, since China was not a big producer of silver, silver has always been a very precious rare metal, and its value is also very high. For example:

< p> Take the Tang Dynasty as an example. During the Emperor Taizong period, the annual salary of a seventh-grade county magistrate was about 25 taels of silver. According to the price at that time, he could buy 500 shi and 60,000 rice, which is about 330,000 yuan in today's RMB. . During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, due to the impact of the Anshi Rebellion, inflation and prices rose, but the value of one tael of silver was still no less than the current 6,000 yuan. By the Song Dynasty, due to the rapid development and expansion of commerce and agriculture, the entire Song Dynasty economy It is very prosperous, and of course prices have become very cheap. Taking a seventh-grade county magistrate in the Song Dynasty as an example, his annual salary was about 360 taels of silver. Although the value of silver at that time had greatly depreciated, it was still as high as 720,000 yuan in today's RMB. In the Ming Dynasty, due to the opening of the Age of Navigation, a large amount of foreign silver flowed into China, and silver officially became the common currency. Taking a seventh-grade magistrate during the Hongwu period of Zhu Yuanzhang as an example, based on the annual salary of 90 shi of rice, at that time One tael of silver can buy two stones of rice. If converted into RMB, the annual salary of a seventh-grade magistrate in the Ming Dynasty was only about 60,000 yuan, the highest in history!

In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the price of silver continued to fall. The annual salary of a seventh-grade county magistrate alone was as high as 1,300 taels of silver, which is about 230,000 taels of silver in today's RMB. For example, the well-known He Shen embezzled a total of 800 million taels of silver. You must know that the compensation amount paid by the Qing government during the Sino-Japanese War was only more than 230 million taels of silver. It is no wonder that there are rumors among the people that He Shen fell. , Jiaqing is full of such a sentence.