In the 60s, our production team had a very capable and honest member. During the Spring Festival, the team leader gave him one dollar to go to town and spend the one dollar as he pleased. After he came back, the captain asked him in front of many members to calculate how he spent the dollar. A dollar is money and needs to be reimbursed. This commune member said that it was cents to eat a bowl of noodles, cents to take a bath, and cents to shave my head. The accountant of the production team was fiddling with the abacus and asked, "It's only cents, what else are you doing?"

This member is honest, but also a little selfish. He said, he finished his noodles, took a shower, and shaved his head! The members burst into laughter.

The captain said that you can eat two bowls of noodles and wash your head twice. How can you shave your head twice? An honest person has no ability to commit corruption even if he wants to. This little joke can reflect that prices were cheap and consumption was cheap at that time. If you spend one dollar to take care of yourself, you can really save two bowls of noodles!

What could one dollar buy in the 60s? I feel like I have a voice. Although I was a child in the 60s, I had experienced that era after all. In the 60s and 70s, during these 20 years, due to the planned economy, prices did not fluctuate much. The purchasing power of 1 yuan is almost the same.

1: Daily necessities.

For example, matches cost 5 cents per box, 8 cents per pack, and one dollar can buy 1 packs. Table salt costs 10 cents per kilogram, and one yuan buys more than 1 kilograms. Soy sauce costs cents per pound (in bulk), and soap costs cents per pound.

Cigarettes and alcohol are luxuries. Regular cigarettes cost eight to nine cents per pack. A pack of 13 cents is better. This kind of cigarette is usually smoked by salaried workers in the city. State cadres' salaries were higher, so they could afford to smoke Daqianmen cigarettes packaged in tin foil. Daqianmen cigarettes at that time were considered high-end cigarettes in the country and cost 45 cents a pack. Ordinary people cannot afford to smoke such cigarettes. In our rural areas, it is rare to see Daqianmen cigarettes.

Most of the wines at that time were loose wines, the better ones were 1 cents per catty, and the worse ones were 1 cents per catty. When guests came to the house, they would take a glass bottle to a consignment store to buy it. At that time, it was luxury enough to have a glass wine bottle at home.

2: Agricultural and sideline products.

Pork costs 135 cents per pound, and live pigs cost cents per pound. At that time, when we were feeding pigs in rural areas, a pig would grow up to kilograms after being fed for one or even two years. Pigs weighing kilograms were extremely rare. At that time, the purchase standard was kilograms, which was enough, and a pig could be sold for sixty or seventy yuan, which was good.

Wheat was not cheap in the 60s and was in short supply. Farmers are based on their work points and population. Most people work six times and four times (6:4). When divided into points, the average per capita of a good production team is less than catties. Therefore, wheat is very expensive, about less than cents per catty, but Never less than cents.

egg. Three cents each. When buying eggs, it doesn’t matter the weight. Most of them are based on size. Later, in the 70s, the price of eggs could rise to five cents each. At that time, farmers raised chickens without eating eggs. They had to exchange eggs for salt. Many times I have taken eggs to the salt sales agency. Two eggs equal a pound of salt.

mutton. At that time, mutton was the cheapest. It wasn’t that people didn’t like mutton, but mutton didn’t contain water. Everyone liked the thick fat of pork, which was satisfying to eat to satisfy their cravings. In the late 60s, the price of an adult male goat would not exceed 15 yuan at most, and the price was generally yuan or yuan per goat. Now when I talk about how much a goat costs, you might think that I am lying, but that was actually the case at the time.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like