"Geographical Grand View" —— A Counter-attack on Zigong City by Salt Well Overflow

Zigong is a regional central city in southern Sichuan, located in the south of Sichuan Basin. It is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Sichuan Province and the central city in the south of Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. Enjoy the reputation of "Millennium Salt Capital", "Dinosaur Town", "Southern Light City" and "Gourmet House". Manage the four districts of Ziliujing, Gongjing, Daan and Yantan and the two counties of Rongxian and Fushun. Fuxi River winds through Zigong City, becoming the natural dividing line between the new city and the old city. Zigong is known as the salt capital, and the salt industry has created the heyday of this city. However, prosperity is also salt, and decline is also salt. Zigong salt industry has gone through a glorious 200 years. Anyone familiar with Zigong's prosperity due to salt knows that Zigong prospered due to salt, but the name Zigong did not appear on the map before the establishment of Zigong City in the 28th year of the Republic of China (1939). Zigong belonged to Fushun county at that time, 30 kilometers southeast of here. Fushun, like Zigong, is also a land prospered by salt, and the history of mining well salt is earlier than Zigong. In Song Dynasty, Wang Xiangzhi recorded the discovery process of salt in "Records of the Land": "Maze, Yi himself, was an Orion in the first year of Jin Taikang. He saw that there was a spring on the stone, and it was salty to drink, so he chiseled the stone for 300 feet, and the salt spring gushed out and fried it into salt, which made people depend on it. " Mei died, and the official was established as a shrine. "The first year of Jin Taikang, that is, in 280 AD, has been 1700 years. According to historians' research, the place where Metz discovered the salt spring and dug the first salt well is Yanjing Street in Fushun County today, and its site still exists today. There is a chestnut tree and an ancient well next to the site, 10 people are hard to hug. It seems that the wanderer tells the vicissitudes of salt industry writing in this land. Fushun is rich because of salt, and it was famous as a rich city in the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin was shunned and changed to Fushun, which has been passed down to this day. After the middle of Ming Dynasty, Fushun salt mining industry began to decline, and its artesian well area was full of cranes and salt wells, so the salt mining center was transferred from Fushun to artesian well. Strong debut in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, Ziliujing salt industry reached its peak, and the embryonic form of a new industrial city has been formed. More than 70% of the residents in the city depend on salt industry for a living. In ancient times, artificial extraction of brine to make salt required a lot of manpower and material resources. In addition to the workers who work directly in the salt well, there are several times more people who serve the salt well indirectly. Records at that time said: "There were about 10,000 people carrying water", "The boatmen were several times as many as those carrying water and twice as many as those carrying salt", "There were about 10,000 people practicing these three arts", "There were hundreds of metalworkers, carpenters, masons and handymen, and thousands of people selling cloth, silk, beans, millet and oil hemp. In a word, artesian well has formed a huge industrial chain centered on salt mining, and the terminal of this chain is the magical brine collected from underground. Li Rui, a famous writer, was born in Ziliujing, and his novel "The Story of Silver City" is set in Ziliujing, which vividly describes 19 and Zigong salt industry at the turn of the 20th century. With so many production personnel and the technology of drilling wells, collecting salt and making salt more than 0/000 years ahead of the world, Zigong's salt industry radiates amazing wealth. According to the investigation and calculation made by Virgil Hart, an American in Zigong in 1888, the annual output value of well salt in Zigong at that time was as high as 49.4 million US dollars-it is worth noting that this was more than 100 years ago. If it is changed to today's current price, its value may be around10 billion US dollars. Today, the total industrial and agricultural output value of Zigong is only this figure. Hart also sighed: "Many wooden derricks are faintly visible and stand tall. This unimaginable landscape of China is hard to see in other parts of the empire. "At that time, the statistics of Sichuan * * * showed that the salt tax of Ziliujing accounted for more than 40% of the province's fiscal and taxation. During the Republic of China, Zhu Kezhen, a famous scientist, wrote in his investigation report: "When I first arrived here, I heard the jingle of salt wells everywhere and thought I was in a factory in Europe and America. This is rare in China and rare in the Mainland. " "During the Anti-Japanese War, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were occupied by Japan, and the sea salt could not be transported. The artesian well salt once again helped Chu. Therefore, in 1939, the state * * * set aside a part of Fushun and Rongxian to set up a city, and the city name was taken from Zigong, the two place names of Ziliujing and Gongjing on the other side of Fuxi River. Salt makes the city prosperous. Ziliujing 1000 has been a town under the jurisdiction of Fushun for many years, but now it has become a provincial city under the jurisdiction of Fushun and Rongxian. This is the so-called "son" of the local people has become "Lao Zi". The passing salt well is in Zigong. Up to now, there are still more than 12000 abandoned salt wells, and the wellhead of most salt wells is still supported by cranes decades or even hundreds of years ago. The so-called crown block is similar to today's drilling derrick, which is built at the wellhead of each salt well. Choose high-quality Chinese fir with hard texture and flexible bamboo strips tied outside. Despite decades and hundreds of years of wind and rain, it still stands quietly in the twilight morning rain of 2 1 century. Walking into it is like walking into this ancient city full of salt in its bones. Perhaps, the influence of salt and salt culture on Zigong is just like a person's first love will be his most unforgettable past, and they can't be excluded from the blood of Zigong, even after so long. In modern times without modern drilling technology, every salt well was completed by manpower and animal power plus extremely simple machinery using the lever principle. Therefore, when we approached Shenhaijing, the deepest well in the world before the middle of19th century, we could not help being shocked by the wisdom of our ancestors. Shenhaijing is located at the foot of Ruanjiaba Mountain in Daan District, Zigong. It was excavated in the 15th year of Daoguang in Qing Dynasty (1835) and it took three years to complete. The well depth is1001.42m, producing both brine and gas. At that time, the amount of brine gushed out was about 14 cubic meters per day, and it could produce 4,800-8,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day, which could be used for cooking 14 tons of salt. According to relevant data, a shallow well was drilled in Semenoff 1846, and a small amount of oil was produced. 13 In 1859, Dirac of the United States drilled an oil well with a depth of 2 1.69 meters, but the oil well only produced 1.8 tons of oil and was scrapped. Many Zigong people have thought about this problem: in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, that is, the period of the rapid rise of western capitalism, Zigong's big salt merchants had a huge industry far beyond our imagination. For example, the Wang Sanwei family has as many as 1200 front-line workers. This figure, not to mention Shanghai and Nantong with the background of Westernization Movement at that time, is incomparable with most factories in Britain and America, the most developed capitalist country. However, it is strange and regrettable that under the large-scale production conditions such as Zigong Salt Field, capitalism did not emerge, but stayed in the family-style handicraft workshop. Or, what caused the decline of Zigong salt industry? The most essential point of today's tribute well salt lies in the high cost of well salt mining. In the turbulent era of inconvenient transportation and constant wars, cheap sea salt can not be transported to the mainland more economically and conveniently, so Zigong well salt has a huge market. However, after the war, the traffic conditions began to improve, and the low-priced sea salt went upstream along the Yangtze River waterway, which surrounded the traditional Zigong well salt sales area. The high cost of well salt made it lack the necessary competitiveness. In this case, it is inevitable that well salt will shrink or even be eliminated. In addition, the decadent lifestyle and concept of life of modern salt merchants also hindered the deepening and development of Zigong salt industry. Let's take Li Siyou's family, the top three salt merchants, as an example to briefly explain. Li Siyou's family began to drill wells to make salt as early as the Ming Dynasty. During the Daoguang period, headed by Li, 7 salt wells and 3 natural gas wells were developed in cooperation with Shaanxi giants, which immediately developed from small and medium-sized to super-large ones. After Li's death, his nephew Li Xiang 'an succeeded to the throne, which coincided with the Taiping Army occupying Nanjing. He took advantage of Sichuan salt to help Chu, expanded his power and became a big salt merchant after Wang Sanwei's family at that time. Gentleman's grace is beheaded three times. In the period of Li Shaotang, after Li Xiang 'an, this Ding Food House began to go to the point of no return. All the money at home was spent at that time. What about salt water? Today, in Zigong, almost all industries closely related to salt, such as salt making and salt chemical industry, are heading for dusk, which is a sunset industry. Zigong salt industry, which has been brilliant for two centuries, has come to an end. Wangye Temple has become a teahouse and ballroom, Fuxi River has become a drainage channel for groundwater, and the exquisite salt merchant club has become a salt history museum. Everything is quietly changing. Whether you feel it or not, life in this city is no longer directly related to salt, although in their bones, they may still have the brand of salt culture era: boldness and loyalty.