Peace needs to be embellished, and national affairs are in trouble.

...

Regarding the property accumulated by Cixi, Lin Guangyu saw a related record in "Qing Bai Lei Chao" before traveling through time. The general meaning is that Cixi had "private savings" of 15 million pounds before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. These property were buried underground in the Forbidden City when the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing. When the two palaces were "hunting west" in the "sky-Japanese War". After returning to the palace in 1901, a large part of the treasures Cixi had been excavated and stolen by the coalition forces, but the remaining part was still worth about 9 million pounds. However, when she died, her "private savings" soared to more than 25 million pounds, which was equivalent to the salary of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom for more than 6 years. According to the exchange rate, she had about 80 million taels of silver.

According to the statement in "Qing Bai Lei Chao", Cixi should have a private house of more than 80 million taels; according to rumors inside and outside the palace, Cixi should have a private house of more than 30 million; according to Li Lianying, Cixi had at least several million in private houses... Which of these three numbers is true? Lin Guangyu was not sure for a while, so he asked Wang Shang: "Where did the Empress Dowager get so much money? If there were so much money, would he have to embezzle the military spending of the navy when building the garden?"

Wang Shang didn't understand what Lin Guangyu wanted to ask, but there was an answer he knew. Cixi would never use her private money to build a garden. She stared at the treasury regardless of whether there was a quantity or not, but she could not say this to the emperor for the time being. So he lowered his head and said, "I don't know very well, I only know that those princes and ministers would have to ask for a large sum of money every time they came to see the Old Buddha, and even General Manager Li was also filial."

"It is a good idea to respect the Empress Dowager during the holidays, but I can't collect so many. I have read the book of filial pamphlets, but only a few hundred taels, at most 2,000 taels!"

Wang Shang smiled bitterly: "The emperor doesn't know that this is just an open number. Even the money to be given to the door of General Manager Li is not enough, and it's almost the same to fool people. If you want to spend too much money, you have to count the expenses of errands."

"After the two palaces returned to the palace, have they issued an edict to stop donating?"

"Your Majesty, it is because of the suspension of donation that he is asking for the Empress Dowager..." Wang Shang blinked, "If this money is less, you can't get any fat."

A word woke up the dreamer, Lin Guangyu suddenly felt enlightened - any vacant official position in the late Qing Dynasty was an opportunity to sell money. Since the donation system with clear price tags has stopped, then those who hold the highest power of the country can secretly monopolize the sale. Cixi seemed to be very familiar with this.

"It's true that donations are stopped, but there are not many people who want to do a job. I've heard some rumors." Wang Shang was afraid that the emperor wouldn't understand, so he added, "For example, customs supervision and tax officials supervise such as 500,000 taels of silver, you can't imagine seeing Lao Fu, and you can't take it down without 3 million taels of silver... Like weaving and salt administration, you can have to at least 1 million silver to get an job... Sometimes there are more than one person who is staring at FAQ, and everyone has to raise the price of each other, and the one who is missing in the end must be the highest bidder."

"Then what if I don't get the official position after paying the money, wouldn't it be a waste of money?"

"This won't be, unless you pay too little money. It doesn't matter if you don't get what you want after the price. The empress dowager will arrange another slightly inferior errand according to the situation, so that people can come happily and go back happily." Wang Shang smiled, "But there is something easy to do here. The empress dowager will not care about these idle errands. At most, she said 'Little Lizi, how do you see this person sending him?'. Then General Manager Li said one opinion, and the empress dowager is often accurate..."

Wang Shang's words revealed the tricks of selling official positions and titles in the Qing Dynasty - if you want to seek an official, you must first get the registration of Li Lianying and tell him what errands he wants, and then Li Lianying told the other party a price. Although this price is in the hands of Li Lianying, the standard is determined by Cixi himself. If the scheming official does not make enough money from Li Lianying, he will deliberately make bad things and deliberately reveal a low price. The result can be imagined that he can't get the job he wants after paying the money. The arrangement of the unsuccessful candidates is in the hands of Li Lianying. At this time, he did not decide the weight of the errand based on the amount of money paid by the official in the previous time, but based on the scheming.

The official's filial piety to him, Li Lianying, decided how to speak at Cixi. Cixi seemed to ask casually, but in fact Li Lianying had already arranged everything. When the errand was finally announced, Cixi called people in to "comfort" at most. She was not in charge of the money, and at most asked Li Lianying to do it. If the errand was too popular and the fuel was too rich, Li Lianying would still have some bad ideas. Cixi stipulated that 2 million yuan would be enough, so he would just claim 2.5 million yuan, and then told Cixi that someone would pay 2.2 million yuan... When it came to "comfort", Cixi and the officials would never mention the money, and all the difference in the money was allowed to go along.

"According to what you said, it's estimated that 80 million taels of silver is not much?"

"This slave dare not argue, but since it is said that there are so many private houses outside, it is not groundless to think that this private house does not necessarily refer to silver, jewelry, jade, and antique calligraphy and paintings are worth a lot of money."

Lin Guangyu had already sunk his face: "Go and take the funeral list prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to me to read."

I don't know if I don't look at it, I was shocked when I saw it, and it clearly remembered it:

When the small burial was about to move Cixi's body into Ziguan, three layers of golden silk beaded brocade mattress at the bottom of the coffin were covered with pearls, one foot thick. The head was jade lotus leaves, pink tourmaline lotus under the feet, and a pearl phoenix crown was placed on the head. Lin Guangyu knew that when Sun Dianying stole treasure, the largest pearl on his head was as big as an egg, worth about 10 million taels of silver. Twenty-seven gold, gems, jade, and jade carved Buddhas were placed beside him, and one jade watermelon, melon, and cabbage was placed on both sides of his feet, and more than 200 gems of peaches, plums, apricots, and dates were placed on the left, and a jade carved coral tree was placed on the right, which was worth about 7 million taels of silver.

When the funeral was about to be placed in the coffin, eight jade horses, eighteen jade arhats, and twelve jade zodiac signs... There were a total of more than 700 pieces, and then four liters of pearls were poured into the coffin and 2,200 gems were filled, which cost about 15 million taels of silver.

When the coffin was moved to the Qianqing Palace in the temporary period of the day, it was buried in the coffin's central beads, east beads, red beads, green jade, coral longevity characters, coral joy characters, coral carved dragon tigers, dragon eye bodhi and other court beads; green jade dots; regular beads hanging; gold inlaid with regular beads, gold inlaid with various real stone beads, gold inlaid with pearl stones, gold inlaid with various real stones, white diamond gourds; gold inlaid with red beads, gold inlaid with vines, gold inlaid with vines, gold inlaid with green beads, white jade inlaid with various real stones, green jade bracelets; regular beads, east beads, gold inlaid with regular beads and other soft bracelets; green jade, tea crystal, white jade skin, agate and other tobacco bottles; foreign gold inlaid with white diamonds, foreign gold inlaid with pearls with pins and other small watches; foreign gold inlaid with white diamonds, peach-style large clam beads, white jade fish and clam beads, white jade antelope and other separates; white jade openwork live rings

Gourds, green jade carved live rings, coral fish and other wears; Han jade silk, Han jade immortal, Han jade washingware; white jade cat, yellow jade pestle, Han jade needle, Han jade antelope, carved green jade ring; sapphire, red and green gems, emerald, eggplant, large and regular beads, green jade, clam beads, green jade inlaid with red and white diamonds and other head-hugging lotus; coral green jade gold inlaid with red and white diamonds and other bats; gold inlaid with red and white diamond dragonflies; gold inlaid with white diamond bee; red and green jade bee; gold inlaid with white diamond bee; gold inlaid with various colors of beads and stones for generations; gold inlaid with diamonds and other crowns; gold inlaid with diamonds and other Buddha hairpins; green jade, coral, red and sapphire, red and white diamonds, emeralds and other beads; yellow gems, diamonds, red and green diamonds, white diamonds, Taizheng beads and other hats... There are still more than 50 million taels.

Later, when the Dongling Feng'an was about to officially place Lingshu in Dongling, the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave a detailed booklet, which was more than twice as many as the previous three times. In addition, the jewelry that had been placed in batches was worth about 150 million taels during the construction of the Dongling.

According to such a rough estimate, the claim that the Dongling burial objects were worth more than 125 million pounds was not exaggerated at all. Most of the relatively expensive jewelry and jade artifacts that escaped the burning of the Old Summer Palace and the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China had been mostly left in the Dongling. If Cixi had not had a high education and was not optimistic about cultural heritage, such as rare books, lonely books, calligraphy and paintings, copybooks, etc., it would have been estimated that all the valuable things in the court would have been wiped out.

Lin Guangyu was stunned and couldn't speak for a long time. He knew that Cixi's funeral was rich, but he didn't expect that it was so thick that it was so thick. It was really unimaginable.

"Who wrote this? His heart can be punished, but he can be punished!"

"The Emperor, part of it was stipulated by the Empress Dowager before, and the other was formulated by the funeral ministers after consultation."

Lin Guangyu was furious, "The state affairs are difficult, the people's livelihood is in decline, the empress dowager is kind to the government and love the people, and has formulated regulations in advance. These slaves are still thinking of breaking through, which is clearly to make the empress dowager rest in peace in the nine fountains."
Chapter completed!