Often in the drama, whenever one person wins, it must be "the spring breeze is proud of horseshoe disease, and Chang' an flowers will see you one day." "Jin Fan's example is almost a well-known story. But you may not know that a scholar, who studied hard for ten years at a cold window, won a scholarship, but only got the qualification to be an official. Because the official establishment in ancient times was very scarce and strictly controlled. Take the Qing Dynasty as an example. On average, about 500 people take the juren examination every year, but less than 50 local official posts (mainly county magistrate) are vacant every year, so the probability that juren is sent abroad to be an official is less than one tenth! Like the Ming dynasty, no one was killed by officials, which was unprecedented and never came again.
So, what is the way to choose expatriate officials? This is a lottery ticket. In the Qing dynasty, the appointment of local officials was allocated by the official department of the capital Beijing by lottery according to the number of qualified candidates each year. Because of the shortage of manpower, many juren are waiting to be allocated ten years in Beijing. During the Qianlong period, some people waited for 30 years to get a magistrate to fill the vacancy! Is it much worse than everyone thinks? Even if it is won, it will cost a lot of money to get from Beijing to the distant county, including transportation and accommodation. When you get there, you will have to rent a house and hire dozens of helpers, such as touts, servants and bearers. Who will pay for these expenses? Since it was appointed by the court, of course, the court paid the salary? No, these expenses are borne by the officials themselves, which is stipulated by the court system.
Some people may ask, don't expatriate officials still have future salary income? Speaking of which, we also want to popularize science. The salaries of Qing officials were very low. How low is it? The salary of a county magistrate is about 45 taels of silver a year, which is equivalent to our current RMB 20,000! ! !
What should I do with so little money and so many places to spend money?
The market has specially tailored a financial product for expatriate officials, the scientific name is "official debt", which is a usury loan specially issued for expatriate officials. Because most of the prospective officials are in Beijing, the official debt is also called "Beijing debt". The institution that specializes in issuing official bonds is called "Household Department", which is a kind of financial institution, similar to private banks.
As a creditor's rights accounting bureau, recommending servants to expatriate officials (called "servant recommendation" in ancient times) has two functions. First, supervise the real income and debt repayment behavior of officials and reduce information asymmetry. Second, expatriates generally have local management experience, so they can also help officials increase their income locally. In the game between accounting bureau and expatriate officials, servant recommendation is equivalent to a clever organ, which solves the dilemma and realizes a win-win situation.
The view of economics on the world is that everything is a contract.