Then the problem came. There were no banks in ancient society, and officials were all over the country. How do you get your salary?
The salary of ancient officials, that is, salary, is not all in money, but also in the form of land and physical objects (food, cloth, etc.) ). First of all, we should understand that the salary system of ancient officials in China was different in different periods.
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the relationship between the Emperor of Zhou and officials was not an employment relationship, and there was no need to pay salaries to officials.
During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the relationship between the Emperor of Zhou and his officials was not an employment relationship, so there was no need to pay salaries to his officials. The so-called salary is the income that officials get from their own fiefs, that is, their salary is the enclosed land, and the size of the land is equivalent to their salary.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, because salaries were mostly in kind, special institutions for granting salaries were set up in various places.
After the Qin Dynasty established a unified feudal autocratic dynasty, the relationship between the emperor and his officials also changed. Officials are not related to the emperor by blood. Officials are employed by the imperial court. They have no fiefs and need to be paid.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, the salary of officials was just some food. Relatively speaking, the salary system of the Western Han Dynasty is more perfect and detailed than that of the Qin Dynasty, and the salaries of officials at all levels are also different. In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was stipulated that officials' salaries were about half in coins and half in kind.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, due to the large proportion of salaries paid in kind, it was quite troublesome to pay a large amount of salaries to local officials. In order to solve the problem of local officials paying salaries, all counties and counties have set up special institutions, and officials go to their local offices to collect them.
After the Tang Dynasty, the official salary system gradually entered the right track, replacing the real thing with money and diverting the central and local governments.
It was not until the Tang Dynasty or even later that the proportion of coins in salary began to increase. Tang Xuanzong unified his salary and paid it to officials in the form of coins on a monthly basis. It can be said that this system is similar to our current salary system.
In the Tang Dynasty, the process of paying salaries was recorded in political documents. If the official's home is in Beijing, then their salary is paid by Taicang Company under Sinong Temple, that is, the official himself goes to the government to collect it, and then it is paid by Taicang Company.
As for the salaries of local officials, the granaries in each county are responsible for issuing them, and the officials themselves collect them. But there is also a time limit for getting paid, once every six months and twice a year.
In the Song Dynasty, you needed a certificate to get a salary. As for vouchers, just like winning the prize now, you need to take your own vouchers to win the prize. For officials, it is also necessary to get paid with vouchers. This voucher is called a voucher calendar, which means that the holder of this voucher can go to the designated place written on it to collect it himself. However, like the Tang Dynasty, there was a time limit, that is to say, after the time limit on the voucher calendar passed, it could not be collected again.
In the Qing dynasty, this voucher became a rice ticket, that is, you need to hold a rice ticket to collect grain.
finally
In addition to the salary system of land fiefs during the slavery period, whether in the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty or other dynasties, the salaries of officials in previous dynasties, even rice and grain calculated by stones, must be collected by officials themselves or sent to local warehouses.
If the journey is long or the salary is heavy, you should bring your own carriage or hire one. Then, of course, you have to get the certificate for verification and then weigh it.
I have to say that this way of collecting money is time-consuming and laborious, and for some officials, getting paid is also a problem. If you are a senior official in Beijing, you can hire someone to collect it, or you can ask the servants at home to collect it and pull it back by carriage. For some local officials, there is not much money at home. After all, the official is small, so I need to take some servants to collect it and carry it back by myself.
But there are some small sesame officials who are poor at home and have to walk to get it. Therefore, this payment method is particularly imperfect and does not fully consider the situation of the families of various officials. After all, it is very troublesome for some officials to get paid.
So up to now, we have been paid by bank transfer, which is very time-saving and labor-saving In ancient times, horses and chariots were slow, and some officials' homes were particularly remote and their places were fixed. It may take a long time to get home after receiving their wages. But now we only need a mobile phone, and in less than a minute, the salary will be in our own hands, which can be said to be very convenient.