Zhang Jian chuckled and said, "Now that the Liao and Song kingdoms have reconciled, and our Majesty's birthday is approaching, it's only natural for the Song kingdom to offer congratulations and celebrate the end of the Liao-Song war. Sending birthday gifts is a matter of course. At worst, our Majesty can simply invite the Queen of Heaven back and celebrate another Queen of Heaven Festival."
Fan Zhongyan understood it all at once.
In addition to annual tribute, the Liao and Song dynasties also exchanged other gifts, such as celebrating the birthdays of the Liao and Song emperors and empress dowagers.
According to historical records, during the more than 100 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Liao and Song, the Song sent 680 envoys to Liao, and the Liao sent 671 envoys to Song.
The cost of receiving the Liao envoys alone reached 20,000 to 40,000 strings of cash, and the gifts given to the emperor and the empress dowager basically remained between 100,000 and 200,000 strings of cash.
It was just because of the equal relationship that the Liao Kingdom would often reciprocate with gifts when the Song Emperor and the Empress Dowager celebrated their birthdays. However, the gifts were not as much as those from the Song Kingdom, but there were still tens of thousands to more than 100,000 strings of cash, which barely prevented the Song Kingdom from losing too much.
As recorded in the "History of the Khitan State", one year when the Song Emperor celebrated his birthday, the Liao Kingdom sent a large number of gifts, including horses, animal skins, gold boxes, silver boxes, crystal belts, Saker Falcons, etc.
The gift list was very long, and most of them were specialties from Northeast China, including beef, mutton, wild boar, fish, deer bacon and other game, each of which was several hundred boxes.
Although it was not as generous as the Song Dynasty directly giving silk, gold, silver and copper coins, all in all, they were actually worth a lot of money. It was not entirely that the Song Dynasty gave the Liao Dynasty a generous gift and the Liao Dynasty gave the Song Dynasty a small profit like sending a beggar, otherwise the Song Dynasty would lose face.
Obviously Zhang Jian's meaning was very simple.
Since you don't pay the annual tribute directly for the sake of face, then consider these 200,000 strings of cash as a birthday gift, so that both sides can give each other a way out.
That is, the Song Dynasty did not increase the currency and achieved a great victory. However, due to the fact that it was a brother country with the Liao Dynasty, it was unwilling to fight to the death and still maintained the original annual tribute of 300,000 strings of cash. What was the reason for the extra 200,000 strings of cash?
That was a gift from the Song Dynasty to the Liao Dynasty emperor to celebrate his birthday.
If you think the Liao emperor's birthday is a bit extravagant, it doesn't matter. Just let Empress Dowager Xiao come back. Empress Dowager Liu of Song has passed away anyway, and Liao will not give a return gift to Empress Dowager Song. Song only needs to celebrate Empress Dowager Xiao's birthday as before.
In this way, one side gained the practical benefits of the land and also saved face. The other side gained an extra 200,000 strings of cash, which also provided money to appease the tribe. In other words, both sides saved both their substance and their face.
For a time, Fan Zhongyan was in a dilemma.
This money.
Should I give it?
Let’s discuss rationally whether we should give it or not.
(End of this chapter)
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