Wanli 1592

Chapter 1083 Black Hades and Black Impermanence

The procurement of ingredients in Guanglu Temple is usually done by the official appointed cook.

As for the cook who took the procurement job, he must have taken the money and got soft.

Therefore, it is rumored that as long as the capital of the former Ming Dynasty pays filial piety to the officials in charge, they can enter Guanglu Temple to cook and get money.

Then whoever has more filial piety will be able to enter. Once in, he must try his best to make money. All kinds of shoddy goods, cooking skills do not matter, so that more than 600 cooks can't find any cooks. The delicious food shows the seriousness of corruption.

Therefore, the food eaten by the emperor of the Ming Dynasty was particularly unpalatable, and the food eaten by the people below was also the same, even worse. Therefore, the food in Guanglu Temple is famous in the capital for being unpalatable.

After Xiao Ruxun ascended the throne, he burned a batch of ledgers in front of the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty, including the ledgers of Guanglu Temple, which calmed the hearts of a group of people.

Xiao Ruxun didn't embarrass the officials of Guanglu Temple, and arranged for Heizhen to investigate. When there were problems, they were laid off during the purge, and their official titles and fame were taken away, and they were demoted to common people. The very few who have integrity will stay and continue to work.

The cooks inside were also checked and killed. The bosses were driven away in batches, leaving only more than 400 people, and they will be recruited later if necessary.

With this, Xiao Ruxun cleaned up Guanglu Temple, replaced it with a group of newcomers who he promoted from the bottom, controlled the mouth of this money-swallowing glutton, and then controlled the purchasing power, and arranged for a special person to make a statistics sheet.

Special personnel counted the number of people and livestock that officials and the palace needed to eat, and stipulated new treatment according to their respective levels, what to eat and drink every day, and fixed-point, regular and quantitative purchases to minimize waste and save money.

What arrangements officials at each level have, how much to eat, what kind of banquets to cook, and the amount of food, there are strict regulations everywhere.

Especially the expenses of each palace, there are many concubines in the former Ming Dynasty, each palace has people living in it, and it has its own small dining hall, the same is true for the prince and queen mother, Xiao Ruxun directly made a one-size-fits-all, no matter there is no one in the harem now, it is directly stipulated that there should be an imperial dining room for royal meals Responsible for the supply, the palaces are not allowed to open small canteens.

That's what I said, but Xiao Ruxun's royal family has only five people in total.

But it’s impossible not to stipulate this way. After all, a considerable part of these expenses are Xiao Ruxun’s own expenses. After separating the internal and external food and beverages, Xiao Ruxun will bear the expenses of the imperial dining room. There are fewer people now, but there will be more people in the future.

Of course, if you want to embezzle, there are many ways, so Xiao Ruxun directly ordered the Central Audit Department to also manage the palace's internal expenditure.

Any expenditures inside and outside the palace must be approved by the Central Audit Department before they can be allocated funds. When they come back, they must provide relevant evidence to prove that there is no corruption.

So following the great reputation of the Central Investigation Department, the Central Audit Department has also become the most feared group of people serving in the palace.

The officials of the Central Investigation Department wear black official robes, which are called "Black Hades" by court officials, and the officials of the Central Audit Department also wear black official robes, which are called "Black Impermanence". It's just that the investigation department is more ruthless and can kill people.

After the expenditure and accounting of money are controlled by the people of the Central Audit Department, no matter who goes out to purchase, they have to go through the audit department.

The cook brought the purchase applications of Guanglu Temple and the Imperial Dining Room to the officials of the Audit Department to apply for money, and then took them out for purchases. The Audit Department sent two officials to follow them out to monitor.

After purchasing, they have to go through the re-inspection of the audit department to see if the purchase is correct and whether it is enough, and then register it and enter the palace.

The opportunities for manipulative actions have been compressed to the extreme, but there are still people who want to be tempted to do so, thinking that the present is the same as the previous dynasties.

The cook from Guanglu Temple was so ungrateful that he tried to bribe the officials of the Audit Department, saying that everyone would share the money he got, but he was taken down on the spot and handed over to the Black Hades of the Investigation Department. What he committed that morning was arrested by the Investigation Department in the afternoon The executioner beheaded.

After the beheading, the head was brought to Guanglu Temple to show the public, and they were warned not to think about it. Three people fainted on the spot, and five of them urinated.

After this incident happened, Xiao Ruxun attached great importance to the selection of cooks. Although he ate his own small stove in the imperial dining room, if the food at Guanglu Temple was too bad and was ridiculed by his subjects, he would feel ashamed .

Those who eat at Guanglu Temple are not maids and servants, but serious officials, such as the officials of the Imperial Academy and the cabinet, such as medical officers, instructors, etc. These are all officials. If they don’t eat well, they go out to gossip. of.

So Xiao Ruxun ordered the officials who were eating to be allowed to complain to the cook. If any dish was too unpalatable, they would complain to the officials of Guanglu Temple, and they could be held accountable to the cook. If they were complained twice, they could be investigated for how they got in. , waiting to be punished.

Since then, the good times of the officials and cooks of Guanglu Temple are gone forever, but the people who eat have a good time.

The officials of the Audit Department also rummaged through boxes and cabinets to find information, and made some special statistics. They calculated that the average monthly money spent on food in the palace during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty was about 1 six taels, about 220 taels of silver per day. Used for eating and drinking in the inner court.

The silver of the Ming Dynasty is much more valuable than the silver of the Qing Dynasty, and many ordinary people have never seen silver in their entire lives.

For common people, generally speaking, five taels of silver is normal for a year.

The purchasing power of silver is extremely high. One tael of silver can buy 370 seven catties of rice. For meat, a catty of pork is 0.02 taels, a catty of mutton is 0.015 taels, a big chicken is 0.05 taels, and a big goose is 0.2 taels.

It is equal to one tael of silver to buy fifty catties of pork, sixty-six catties of mutton, twenty chickens, and five geese.

These silvers alone can buy 15 catties of pork and more than 8000 catties of rice every day.

This is only the consumption of the inner court, the consumption of the royal family and maids in the inner court.

Not counting the food made by Guanglu Temple, the palace people are not qualified to eat the food made by Guanglu Temple. They can only take Lumi by themselves and cook it outside the palace, then carry it to the palace to heat it up before eating.

Guanglu Temple only cooks for people with status, such as the emperor's royal family, such as some courtiers, people who work in the palace, and so on. There are also major festivals, Guanglu Temple has to organize banquets, and the silver consumed by Guanglu Temple Not less than the inner court.

But since Jiajing, the nobles in the palace have not eaten at Guanglu Temple.

Everyone knows that the food at Guanglu Temple is so unpalatable. At first, there was no way, even the emperor honestly ate the food at Guanglu Temple, let alone other people?
But later, starting from Jiajing, the emperor himself took the lead not to eat the food of Guanglu Temple, so who would most of the people with status and status eat?
The concubines of each palace have their own small kitchens, and nobles such as the queen mother, prince and princess will not eat unpalatable big pot meals. Even the emperor later started a meal with the eunuch system, which is enough to prove that people with status are not in Guanglu at all. Temple to eat.

In the later period, the only people who ate at Guanglu Temple were the newcomers who had nothing to do with being an official and the old antiques who were not popular.

As a result, the meals made by Guanglu Temple were no longer eaten by anyone during the Wanli period, and their sense of existence was extremely reduced. They were gradually replaced by the inner court food system. The inner officials began to control the royal diet, but there was not much consumption. decline.

Counting the inner court and the outer court together, tens of thousands of taels of silver are spent every month like flowing water, but how much of it is actually spent, it is really hard to say, just like the corruption in the imperial court in the late Ming Dynasty , It would be great if [-]% of it can be used in practice.

During the Wanli period, the emperor could use 16 taels of silver a day for eating and drinking, and then gradually increased. By the time of Chongzhen, there were more than 20 taels of silver a day, and it was only the emperor alone, not counting other royal nobles, queen mothers and concubines.

If you really think about it, at that time, the royal family probably spent no less than 500 taels of silver a day on food.

The Daqin Dingding set up an imperial dining room separately, and deprived the imperial family of eating and drinking from the name of Guanglu Temple. They did not play with Guanglu Temple at all, and then cleaned the personnel in the original Ming palaces.

Before the founding of the country, Shen Yiguan dismissed a batch of maids in the court, and after the inner court was purged, another batch was dismissed.

In this way, there were only more than 500 servants and more than 500 maids left. Later, a group of maids were recruited in the palace. Now there are more than 500 servants and more than 800 maids in the palace. Eat in a special canteen in the inner court system.

The number of the royal family is small, and they do not eat at Guanglu Temple. The main personnel who go to Guanglu Temple to eat have become officials of the outer court and the inner court. There are also hundreds of officials from the investigation department and the audit department.

The presence of Guanglu Temple has been greatly weakened, and the monthly consumption of food by the outer court has dropped by 25% compared with the same period in the 80.00th year of Wanli.

The same is true for the inner court. During the five months from April to August in the first year of Longwu, the inner court spent an average of only 2000 taels a month on food.

The inner court of more than 2000 people only spends more than 60 taels of silver per day, which is a full five-sixth reduction in expenditure on food in the court during the same period in the 25th year of Wanli.

(End of this chapter)