In present-day Great Chu, even if one uses their own fat to render oil, it costs sixty cents to render one jin of oil, while the fatty oils sold on the market are even more expensive, selling at seventy cents per jin. The jar of fatty oil their family last sent to the Gu family, just five jins plus the cost of the jar, amounted to three hundred and eighty cents.
Pine oil requires going into the mountains to collect resin and then refining it, so it is no cheaper than fatty oil, also selling at seventy cents per jin.
Not to mention candles, which are quite precious.
A pair of candles sells for two hundred cents, affordable only for nobility, scholarly families, and wealthy households. Ordinary farming families only buy a couple of candles during New Year, weddings, or ancestral rituals.
Considering this, the cost of soybean oil is much cheaper.
