In traditional culture, buying land and buying a house has always been a simple pursuit of people. Ordinary people work hard all year round, but they just want to save up three or five buckets of grain and exchange it for money to buy a few acres of good paddy fields, which is a big thing that is "worthy of the ancestors".
Celebrities and rich people with some family backgrounds are also full of obsession with "buying a house". For example, the famous literary scholar Lu Xun did not hesitate to live a "north drift life" for many years, just to earn more salary to buy his own big house and improve the living conditions of the family.
However, buying a house in the Republic of China era was not easy. At that time, public opinion believed that selling houses was a "loser" behavior, and few people were willing to sell houses, which directly led to the imbalance between supply and demand of houses, which pushed up the house prices in the Republic of China in disguise.
In this way, although Lu Xun took the high salary of the Ministry of Education, he still could not afford to buy the imperial mansion in full, and eventually had to borrow money to buy a house and live a life of a house slave who saved money to pay off the mortgage.
Perhaps inspired by this experience, in 1923, Lu Xun specifically mentioned in the article "What Happens After Nala Left": "The word money is difficult to hear, or it must be ridiculed by noble gentlemen." But I think money, to put it elegantly, the economy, is the most important. ”
The great literary master of the hall actually had such a feeling. What did Lu Xun experience in the process of buying a house?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" >01 north drift life</h1>
Lu Xun's salary has not been low.
In 1912, Lu Xun was invited by Cai Yuanpei to serve as the chief of the first section of the Department of Social Education of the Ministry of Education. In August of the same year, he was appointed as the Minister of Education of the Beijing Government.
The salary for this job, at first, was about 60 oceans. After that, as Lu Xun's fame grew, by 1919, Lu Xun's salary had risen to 350 oceans, and if you add translation and writing fees, Lu Xun's monthly income was as high as five or six hundred oceans.
This income was placed during the Republic of China years, and it was properly the standard of "high-income people". According to the "Life History of the Silver Dollar Era", in Shanghai in the 20s, the price of a quintal of rice was 3 to 4 silver dollars, 1 pack of old knife brand cigarettes 3 copper plates, 8 copper plates for shaved heads, 1 pound and 1 dime for Shaoxing wine, and 1 copper plate for stinky tofu dry to buy 2 pieces. Someone once brought a big ocean to invite seven or eight friends to dinner, and everyone first went to eat tea, and then ate various snacks such as raw fried steamed buns and crab shell yellow, and it took more than 20 copper plates in total.
The consumption level of private cities fell on the literature, that is, at that time, a person spent 30 oceans a month to have a good quality of life. This cost is not worth mentioning compared with Lu Xun's salary, but it is really "too luxurious" for other workers, after all, the workers in the same period as Lu Xun are only 150 oceans a year.
However, Lu Xun, who seems to have a high income, also has his own troubles. Since coming to Beijing in 1912, Lu Xun has been living in the Shaoxing Guild Hall. According to the rules, the Shaoxing Guild Hall could not carry family members, and Lu Xun was forced to leave his mother and wife in his hometown and live a "north drift life" alone, which almost became a piece of Lu Xun's heart disease.
From 1912 to 1919, Lu Xun wanted to buy a house many times, but the house prices in Beijing were too high. Even though in 1917, Lu Xun recommended his younger brother Zhou Zuoren to the National History Compilation Office affiliated with Peking University to compile, and then Zhou Zuoren became a professor of liberal arts at Peking University, with a salary of up to 240 oceans per month, but the two brothers joined hands to save money, and still did not save enough money to buy a house in Beijing.
Some people may ask, in 1919, Lu Xun's salary was already 28 times the average wage of workers, why could he still not afford to buy a house?
This is because Lu Xun's income is not his own expense, and he also needs to send it back to his hometown to support his mother and wife. Coupled with the fact that at that time, it was in the period of the Beiyang warlords, the social productivity declined, inflation was serious, and land prices rose accordingly, and the remaining money in Lu Xun's hands was not enough to buy a house.
After the Spring Festival in 1919, Lu Xun finally decided to buy a big house in Beijing and bring his mother, wife and Zhou Zuoren's family to Beijing to live.
At that time, there was no housing speculation group in Beijing, and there was no intermediary company that called people to see the house all day. Lu Xun could only collect information on his own, and then, accompanied by colleagues from the Ministry of Education, went to see the houses one by one according to the collected housing information.
However, the information collected by himself is often not accurate enough, and Lu Xun repeatedly flew the air when he looked at the house, and could not help but leave in his diary such poignant records as "looking at the house on Baozi Street, which has been sold", "in the afternoon with Qi Shoushan to see the house in the blacksmith hutong, it is not suitable for use" and so on.
However, seeing more houses, Lu Xun gradually has his own "gold standard", that is, the house "one should be safe, the second should be cheap, and the third should be quiet", but such a house is often encounterable and unattainable, and finally Lu Xun spent more than 5 months, after looking at dozens of houses of large and small sizes, he finally found a suitable residence in Badaowan Hutong inside Xizhimen.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" >02 It's not easy to be a house slave</h1>
The house that Lu Xun likes is a three-in-one large quadrangle, with 28 houses, and a small courtyard that can accommodate children to play, which is enough to meet the living needs of Lu Xun's large family.
The house is good, but the price is amazingly expensive. According to the records in Lu Xun's diary, the owner of the house asked for 3500 oceans, in addition to the intermediary fee of 173 oceans, taxes and fees of 180 oceans, water pipe fees of 115 oceans, and 425 oceans of decoration of the house.
Lu Xun did not have so much money in his hands, so he consulted with his mother and sold the ancestral house of Shaoxing for 1,000 oceans, and then pulled his brother to buy a house together, but there was still a gap of 500 oceans.
In that war-torn era, there were no installment loans that lasted twenty or thirty years today. Lu Xun had to ask his friends for help from many sources, and finally borrowed a three-month short-term loan with a monthly interest rate of 1.3% at a "high price".
In this way, Lu Xun, who was saddled with a "mortgage", finally successfully moved into a new home. However, the good times did not last long, and in 1923, Lu Xun and his younger brother Zhou Zuoren fell out of harmony, and in anger, they went out of the house and "gave" to his brother the Badaowan mansion that he had spent his life savings.
After leaving the "mansion", Lu Xun could no longer afford to buy a house of the same specifications, so he had to retreat to the second place, buying a small courtyard with a price of 800 oceans in Fuchengmen Neixi Santiao Hutong, which contained 6 rooms, and then moved in with his mother and wife.
This time to buy a house Lu Xun still borrowed money, fortunately lent money to Lu Xun's friend is very generous, did not urge Lu Xun to repay. However, the experience of repaying the "mortgage" twice in a row still made Lu Xun stretched over and in debt. According to some scholars, it was not until 1926 that Lu Xun paid off all his mortgages.
Looking back at Lu Xun's "North Drift House Purchase", it is not difficult to see how difficult it was to buy real estate in the Republic of China era. Lu Xun, a high-income cultural celebrity, has tried his best to buy a house, and ordinary people want to have a home and how much hard work they have to pay. In contrast, some of today's "house speculation groups" have made less contributions to human society than Lu Xun, but they can live in a bigger and better house than Lu Xun, which undoubtedly shows from a certain aspect that with the development of society, the living conditions of ordinary people have been greatly improved compared with the Republic of China era, and the people's lives have become more and more prosperous. If Lu Xun had known about it, he would have said from the bottom of his heart: What a happy era people are living in today!
References: "Lu Xun's Diary", "Lu Xun's Chronology"
Author: Our special guest author Zhu Yingyuejiang