Text/Sweets
I recently attended a gathering of classmates and friends, and I found that the first sentence when people meet is often: Have you bought a house? After graduation, buying a house becomes a top priority for young people. Because house prices have been rising in recent years, the later you buy, the greater the loss.
Group anxiety infects each other, and it seems that not buying a house is to be behind. On the contrary, young people who have bought a house often have to give all the income from their years of hard work to real estate developers, and even have to take the hard savings of their families, which is not an easy experience. So, how should contemporary young people view the issue of buying a house?
Looking back at history, we find that cultural celebrities in the Republic of China period were not keen on buying a house. In particular, professors at Peking University, the country's highest institution of learning, live in a representative state of residence — and although professors earn well, most of them rent off-campus rents, and few buy houses. Why don't Peking University professors buy a house?
Hu Shi and Jiang Dongxiu
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First, the professor is popular not to buy a house
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During the Republic of China period, young people living in the city did not have the "just need" of not buying a house and not being able to start a family, and the mother-in-law and mother-in-law did not have the "hard requirement" that they could not marry their daughters without buying a house. Not only the majority of young friends, even the famous scholars living in the city, do not care whether to buy a house or not. At that time, Peking University did not have a special professor's dormitory, only some single dormitories for unmarried teachers, and professors needed to find their own accommodation. Most of them rent a house, and few choose to buy a house.
For example, Xiong Shili, a master of traditional Chinese studies, was hired by President Cai Yuanpei to teach new solipsism at Peking University, and although he lived in Beijing for a long time, he never had a private house, lived by renting a house, and moved several times. What's more interesting is that Peking University President Cai Yuanpei himself is a veteran tenant. Cai Yuanpei, whether in Beijing or Shanghai, is a long-term rental house. In this regard, I am afraid that it is difficult for contemporary people to understand why celebrities in the Republic of China are not keen to buy houses? Is their sense of security so overflowing?
Not only the Peking University professor group, but also the well-known couples familiar to the public today, such as Liang Shiqiu and Cheng Jishu, Yu Dafu and Wang Yingxia, Xu Zhimo and Lu Xiaoman, Shen Congwen and Zhang Zhaohe, Zheng Zhenduo and Gao Junzhen, etc., these celebrities did not buy a house when they got married, and they also rented a house after marriage. Zhang Taiyan, who is famous, not only rented the wedding room when he got married in Shanghai, but even the furniture in the new room was all borrowed. Only Bingxin later bought a second-hand house in Chongqing, but when she married sociologist Wu Wenzao, the marriage house in Beijing was also rented.
Lu Xun and Xu Guangping
<h1>Second, professors do not buy houses because they are poor? </h1>
Some people say that cultural people do not buy houses, probably because of one word: poor.
When Mr. Xiong Shili studied Buddhism in Nanjing, he was "so poor that he only had one pair of pants." Wash your pants before going to bed each time and wait until they are dried the next day. If it rains on a cloudy day and your pants don't dry, "you have to wear a hollow robe." Therefore, he was often teased by his peers. Later, Mr. Xiong Shili was hired by Peking University, and his living conditions were improved. He does not buy a house in Beijing, which seems to be understood from an economic point of view. However, cultural people do not buy houses, are they all because they are poor?
This is not the case. Cultural celebrities don't buy houses, not because they can't make money, on the contrary, they make money quite fiercely. For example, the high income of Hu Shi, Zhang Hexhui and others has always been a hot topic. Even Uddhav, who has always been known for his poverty, earned more than ten times as much as the average working class during the period when he was paid a higher salary. When Hu Shi first joined Peking University to teach, his monthly salary was as high as 260 yuan, which later rose to 600 yuan. In addition, he also has various incomes such as royalties and writing fees, and his economic strength should not be underestimated. In Beijing at that time, it only cost a few hundred oceans to buy a small courtyard. Hu Shi was fully capable of buying a mansion.
Similarly, the best-selling author Zhang Hexhui is also a money-making expert, because of his large number of fans and generous manuscript fees, so that folk rumors say that he "received tens of thousands of yuan in ten minutes and bought a royal palace in Beijing." Although Zhang Hexhui also has the financial strength to buy a mansion, in fact, he has been renting a house for many years. After moving from Shanghai to Beijing, he only used the fee to rent a house in Dashilar.
Shanghai urban women in the 1930s
Another example is Mr. Lu Xun, whose annual income in 1929 was enough to buy four or five sets of courtyards in Beijing. Lu Xun bought a house for the first time in Beijing, aged 38, and had been renting a house before. After he fell out with Zhou Zuoren, the Beijing house was given to his family, and he bought a house for the second time. But later in Shanghai, he and his newlywed wife Xu Guangping still rented a house, and it was not possible to buy another marriage house. Xu Guangping once wanted to buy a house in Nanxiang, but eventually he didn't want to.
<h1>Third, who is most enthusiastic about buying a house? </h1>
During the Republic of China period, the first speculators in the city who were keen to buy houses were speculative merchants, and their main purpose of buying houses was to invest. Then, as now, investing in real estate in first-tier cities was a lucrative business. During the Republic of China period, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Beijing were all first-tier cities with various advantages and conditions, bringing together elite talents and young students from all over the country. Land prices in these cities are relatively high.
Chen Cunren, a famous doctor, recalled that once he heard Ding Fubao talk about "buying a house". At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Ding Fubao once bought a property at the mouth of Jing'an Temple Road (present-day Nanjing West Road) and Parker Road (present-day Yellow River Road) in Shanghai for 800 yuan of silver coins. In the Republic of China, the market has become exuberant, land prices have soared, and some bankers have purchased it at a high price of 136,000 yuan and expanded it into a "twenty-four-story international hotel". Ding made a lot of money and came up with a life experience: "The method of financial management is the most reliable way to buy real estate." Chen Cunren listened, "greatly stimulated", so he also moved the idea of saving funds to buy real estate.
Shanghai during the Republic of China
From the perspective of investment profitability, buying a house in a big city is profitable. For example, from 1912 to 1937, the price of some land in Shanghai almost doubled every year, and many people who bought houses in Shanghai became rich. Zhang Ailing's "The Golden Lock" was created in 1943, which has such a plot: the heroine Cao Qiqiao wants Jiang Jize's real estate, but Jiang Jize is unwilling to sell it. Because he said, "No one approves of me getting rid of my hand", and shanghai's housing prices "are going to rise". He thinks it's too much to sell a house now. Moreover, he also plans to sell all the land in the village and concentrate funds on speculating in Shanghai. Not only the big and small businessmen, but also the politicians of the time, also stared at real estate, because it was profitable.
<h1>Fourth, what is the reason why literati scholars do not buy houses? </h1>
Perhaps the housing concept of celebrities in the Republic of China is not the same as today, in the words of the writer Li Kaizhou: "At that time, people only wanted to have a house to live in, not to have a house." ”
The first important reason why cultural celebrities do not buy houses is that the concept of living is different from today. In the eyes of Peking University professors, the value of life does not need to be manifested through external materials, and the happiness of individuals and families is not pinned on a house. In their eyes, I am afraid that there are too many things that are more important than a house.
The old newspaper of the Republic of China reported that celebrities bought houses
Secondly, since the late Qing Dynasty, the urbanization tendency of intellectuals is very obvious, when a large number of young people with school education left the countryside and entered the city, and finally chose to settle in the city, rather than returning to their hometown to buy land and build a house. Therefore, there are few people in the cities of the Republic of China, there is a shortage of housing, and the housing shortage is more serious, resulting in high housing prices in the city. Buying a home in a big city can be easily done by the non-general public.
Taking Shanghai as an example, an acre of land at the most expensive time can be sold for 3 million oceans, and the land on both sides of Huiai Road, the most prosperous in Guangzhou, is as high as 400,000 oceans per well. It is said that the house prices in Shanghai at that time were higher than in Paris, France. For most young intellectuals, their income is far less than that of well-known scholars, and buying a house is not economically capable of them.
Finally, there is an objective reason. At that time, the work of the society, whether it was professors and scholars, cultural celebrities or small and medium-sized intellectuals, was often changing. Scholars with distinct personalities are often hired elsewhere for personal reasons, or even simply because they are not in line with the ideas of school leaders. Especially after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, professors and scholars were adrift at any time, had no fixed place to live, and there was an unreasonable need to buy a house and buy property. Therefore, most of the professors at that time chose to rent a house.
Resources:
1. Ma Xi, "A Hundred Years of Cold and Warm: The Living Conditions of Chinese Intellectuals in the 20th Century"
2. Li Kaizhou, "From Lu Xun to Buy a House to See the House Price of the Republic of China"
3. Statistical Bureau of the Comptroller's Office of the National Government, Statistical Analysis of China's Land Problem
4. Zhang Ailing, "The Golden Lock"
5. Chen Cunren, "Life History in the Silver Dollar Era"
6. Wang Zhen, "Housing Shortages and Housing Security in Beiping during the Republic of China"