Sixty-year-old only child: The system taught me how to become rich

As for watches and sewing machines, which were known as the "three major items" along with bicycles at that time, they were naturally expensive: the "May Day" all-steel watch in 1964 retailed for 70 yuan each. The "Shanghai Shockproof Watch" from 1965 retails for 120 yuan. In 1963, the retail price of a horizontal bucket sewing machine was as high as 140 yuan. Everything at the time made people feel like "the salary is not enough". Who can get all the "three big things" together when they get married? That's the standard rich man.

The cost of clothing was not small. Fabrics and cotton clothing materials were in short supply at the time. In Tianjin in the 1960s, a "polyester-cotton khaki men's uniform top" sold for 19 yuan, and a pair of "polycotton khaki men's uniform pants" sold for 14 yuan. If everything is "matched" from top to bottom, ordinary workers can earn just one month's salary. Therefore, "buying clothes" was a rare luxury for working-class families at that time. Even if I "wear new clothes during the Chinese New Year", I usually buy the materials myself. As for normal times? That was really "three more years of mending things."

For example, in 1962, when Li Zhentian first started table tennis, in addition to "saving a week's food money" to buy a racket, his mother also sold the family's coat and bought a pair of sneakers for each of Li Zhentian's brothers, plus a A sponge and a net cost ten yuan in total. This is "all the expenses my mother spent on playing ball for Li Zhentian." Because of this, Li Zhenzhen wore that pair of sneakers for three years and had seven patches patched on them. Even though he couldn't wear them anymore because of his long body, he "was still reluctant to throw them away."

There are also some daily necessities that are commonplace today. At that time, they were "extremely expensive luxuries": for example, candy. In Tianjin in the 1960s, first-grade white sugar cost eighty-eight cents per catty, and red apricot gummy candy cost two yuan and seventy-one catty. . You know, at that time, for working-class families in Beijing with better conditions to replace gas, the price of a tank of gas was only yuan, which was equivalent to the retail price of a pound of red apricot gummy candies. When people in Shanghai got married at the same time, it would be very honorable for the man to use two or three pounds of sugar as a betrothal gift.

There are also plastic products. In the 1963s, people often called "plastic" "chemistry" to reflect its high quality and high price. In , a "chemical soap box" (plastic soap box) sold for cents, equivalent to a pound of mutton. A pair of "chemical sandals" (plastic sandals) retail for yuan, and a "chemical comb" costs cents. For ordinary urban and rural families at that time, they would not dare to buy such "bargains".

What's more important is that even in the 1960s, if you had a lot of money in your hands, if you had "only money", you probably wouldn't be able to buy anything. Because a major feature of that era was the supply by ticket.

In that era of extremely scarce supplies, the daily consumption of Chinese people was "rationed". For example, residents in Beijing, in addition to using food stamps to buy grain, must also present the "Beijing Residents' Non-staple Food Purchase Certificate" to buy non-staple food. Each person can buy 2 taels of sugar and a pound of salt per month.

You can also buy three taels of cooking oil every month with your oil stamps. Each household can also buy half a catty of yellow sauce every month. In the early 1960s, Shanghai issued more than fifty types of tickets. Compared with these big cities with better conditions, the "vote supply" in other places is of course more strict.