Mark KURLANSKYFEB.
2002 on one occasion, I stood on the shore of the rice fields in rural Sichuan, a thin Chinese farmer dressed in a faded forty-twoyear-
The old blue jacket issued by Mao Zedong's government in the early days of the revolution, with his knees standing deep in the water, there was almost nothing shouting at me ,"
We Chinese invented a lot of things! "      
The Chinese are proud of their invention.
All Chinese leaders, including Mao Zedong, will give a speech sooner or later, listing many of China's first.
Although it seems that a new round of inventions is needed in rural China, it is undeniable that the Chinese have created many key historical creations, including paper making, printing, gunpowder, and the compass.      
China is the oldest cultural society in existence. its 4,000-year history of writing began in the history of invention.
When the legend becomes a human being, when the living historical figure becomes a legend, it is not clear.
The history of China is the same as that of the Old Testament.
In Genesis, first of all, there are legends, stories of creation, mythical figures such as Adam, Eve and Noah, and generations who may or may not have lived, gradually, this generation follows Abraham and records the beginning of Hebrew history.      
In Chinese history, the earliest was Pangu, the creator of human beings made from parasites.
He died, but then wise rulers who invented what made China the first civilization.
Fu Xi was the first animal to be domesticated.
Obviously, he is a person who loves family life and is also considered to be the one who invented marriage.
Next is the Shennong who invented medicine, agriculture and trade.
The Plough and the hoe are owned by him.
Then on the emperor, he invented words, bows and arrows, carriages and ceramics.
A few centuries later Emperor Yao came, and he was a wise ruler who passed on his unqualified son and appointed a modest saint, his successor
Shun chose his minister Yu to replace him. In 2205 B. C.
According to tradition, Yu Jianxia Wang Chao and the dynasty lasted until 1766 B. C.
Enter the history of the record.
The history of China's salt industry began with the mythical imperial land of inventing words, weapons and transportation.
According to legend, he also hosted the first salt war.
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One of the earliest verifiable salt fields in China during prehistoric times was Shanxi.
In this arid area of yellow land and desert mountains, there is a saltwater lake-Yuncheng Lake.
The area is known for its constant wars, all of which are the control of the lake.
Chinese historians, for sure, to 6000C.
Every year, when the lake evaporates in the summer sun, people harvest square crystals on the surface of the water, which the Chinese call"
Drag and pull. "
The age of human bones found around the lake was much earlier, and some historians speculated that the residents might have also collected salt from the lake.      
The earliest written record of salt production in China can be traced back to about 800 B. C.
It tells about the production and trade of sea salt during the summer of a thousand years ago.
I don't know if the technology described in this account is really used in the summer, but at the time of this account they are considered the old way, it describes putting seawater into a clay container, boil until it turns into a crystal of salt.
It was the technique of the Roman Empire spreading in southern Europe, 1,000 years after the narrative of China was written.       About 1000 B. C.
, The first use of iron in China, although the first evidence of the use of iron in salt making is until 450 B. C.
A man named Yi Dun
According to a passage in 129 BC. , "
Yi Dun became famous by producing salt in the pot. "
Yi Dun is considered to make salt by cooking salt water in an iron pan, and this innovation will become one of the leading technologies for making salt in the next 2,000 years.
Legend has it that he works with a blacksmith named Guo Zong and is friendly with an enterprising bureaucrat named Fan Li.
Fan Li is believed to have invented the fish industry, which has been linked to salt for hundreds of years --Origin.
Chinese people, like later Europeans, think that salt and fish are partners.
Many Chinese, including Mencius, a famous Confucian thinker, are from 372 to 289. C.
It is said that both fish and salt are very effective.
* In China's long history, it is rare to sprinkle salt directly on food.
Usually added through various conditions during cookingsalt-
Sauces and sauces.
The usual explanation is that salt is expensive and these condiments will harden it.
From the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia, this is the idea that the ancient world has repeatedly appeared, and fish fermented with salt is one of the most popular salt condiments in ancient China.
It's called Jiang.
But in China, soybeans are added to the fermentation of fish, and over time, the fish is completely dropped from the recipe, and the river becomes Jiangyou, or, as the West says, soy sauce.      
Soybean is a bean plant that produces two or three types of beans in two beansinch-long furry pod.
Beans can be yellow, green, brown, purple, black or spotted, and Chinese cooking makes a big difference between these varieties.
Jiangyou is made of soybeans, and others are fermented with salt to produce different sauces and condiments.
In China, the first words to mention soybeans were in the 6 th century. C.
, Describe the factory as 700-year-
Old crops from the North
Soybeans arrived in Japan from China in the 6 th century. D.
Chinese Buddhist missionaries
Both religion and beans were successfully implanted.
But the Japanese did not start producing soy sauce until the 10 th century.
Once they learn, they call it shoyu and industrialize it and sell it around the world.      
Although the pronunciation of Jiangyou and Shaoyu is very different and seems to be very different words in Western writing, the two words are the same in Japanese and Chinese.
Mao Zedong's 1950-word literacy campaign reduced language to about 40,000 characters
The hairy features of the soybean plant su depict the small roots at the bottom, which restore the soil.
Soybeans can put nutrients back into the soil and restore land that has been depleted by other crops.
Beans are nutritious and one does not use anything but water, soy and salt.
* The process of fermentation of beans in pottery jars by the Chinese and later Japanese is today called lactic acid fermentation or, in more common terms, pickled.
The best lactic acid fermentation occurs at 60-
Four years old and seventy years old
1 F, which is an easy-to-achieve environment in most parts of the world.
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When vegetables start to rot, sugar breaks down and produces lactic acid, a preservative.
In theory, pickling can be done without salt, but carbohydrates and proteins in vegetables tend to rot too fast to be preserved by emerging lactic acids.
Without salt, the form of yeast, the fermentation process leads to alcohol instead of kimchi.       Between . 8 and 1.
5% of the weight of vegetables in salt hinders the decay process until lactic acid can be taken over.
Oxygen is not included, whether it is a sealed jar, or more often, by weighing vegetables to keep them immersed in a liquid, it is necessary for a successful lactic acid fermentation.      
Preserved in pottery jars in ancient China, a white film called kahm yeast was formed on the top, harmless but not tasty.
Every two weeks, vegetables must be cleaned and even cooked to remove the film.
This is why pickling in pottery jars has been unpopular.      
Kimchi is still a staple food in Sichuan.
Rice is made of rice. rice is not salted.
Salty vegetables make a pleasant contrast to the warmth of warm but unseasoned rice porridge, a common breakfast food.
In fact, kimchi is marinated on rice.      
Zigong, south of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, is a mountainous provincial salt town, which has become a city due to its advantages of salt wells.
Crowded, narrow, downhill open space
The town center's air market continues to sell salt and special pickling cans from two local specialties, paocai and zhacai.
A woman selling glass pickling cans on the market provided this recipe for paocai: fill the jar with two-
Heat with salt water.
In two days add the vegetables you like and the spices you like, cover the lid and the vegetables are ready.      
The spice added is usually red pepper or ginger, a perennial herb native to India, known to Chinese people since ancient times.
Red pepper, today is the core ingredient of Sichuan cooking, did not arrive until the 16 th century, brought to Europe by Columbus, brought to India by Portuguese, brought to China by Indian, Portuguese, Andalusian or Basque     
Paocai eaten in two days obviously pays more attention to taste than preservation.
After two days, the vegetables were still crisp, the salt kept the color and even brightened.
Acacai is made of salt instead of salt water, alternating vegetable layers with salt crystal layers.
Salt forms brine from the juice taken out of vegetables.
When a farmer has a baby girl, the family puts a vegetable every year and gives her the jar when she gets married.
This shows how long zachai was saved before eating.
The original idea in the Middle Ages was to marry her after 12 to 15 pots.
I usually eat more vegetables today.      
The Chinese also solved the delicate problem of transporting eggs by keeping them in salt.
They soak the eggs in salt water for more than a month, or soak the eggs for less time, and then wrap the eggs in salt mud and straw.
An egg with a hard egg
The consistency cooked with the bright orange egg yolk, if handled properly, will neither break nor deteriorate.
A more complex technique, including salt, ash, alkali, and tea, produces"1,000-year-old egg. "
The typical love of Chinese poetry exaggeration, 1,000-year-
It takes about 100 days for old eggs to be made, and it will remain for 100 days, although the yolk is a bit green and the smell is strong.
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During the Mediterranean BUIC war, Shu, governor of Sichuan province today, was a man named Li Bing.
The governor is one of the greatest water conservancy talents ever.      
The coincidence of water engineering skills and political leadership does not seem surprising, as it is remembered that water management is one of the key issues in developing China, a land of drought and flooding.      
The Yellow River is named for its yellow silt flowing through northern China, known"
Father of the flood. "
It and the Yangtze River are two great rivers in Chinese history, both originated in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, winding the sea on the east coast of China.
Yellow runs through the arid northern region and tends to pile up silt, raising the river bed, causing flooding unless the dam is built around the river bank.
The Yangtze River is a wider river with many navigable tributaries.
It flows through China's green and rainy center, dividing the world's third-largest country from the Tibetan mountains to Shanghai in the East China Sea.      
It is said that the rule of the wise Emperor Yao was a golden age in ancient China, one of the reasons was that Emperor Yao tame nature by introducing the concept of flood control.
Li Bing has taken on some mythical levels of Yao, a God who conquered the flood and tamed nature.
But unlike the mythical Emperor Yao, Li Bing's existence is well documented.
His most remarkable achievement was the construction of the first dam, which still runs in modern form.
In a place called Dujiangyan, he separated the Minjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River.
The diverted water enters a series of overflow channels that can be opened for irrigation during drought and can be closed during flooding.
He put three statues in the water.
If their feet are visible, it marks the drought and the gate of the dam is opened for water to enter.
If their shoulders are flooded, the flood has gone up too high and the gates of the dam are closed.
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Pingyuan in eastern Sichuan became the rich agricultural center of China due to Dujiangyan dam system.
An ancient record known as the area
Land of Abundance"
The dam is still in operation and the Sichuan plain is still an agricultural center today.      
At 1974, two water feet carved in. D.
168, found in the river bed of the Li bingba site.
They seem to be a replacement for the original water ruler statue.
One of them is the oldest Chinese stone statue ever discovered.
It's a statue of Li Bing.
He used the original gauge to describe the God of flood control.
Four centuries after his death, he was considered one of these gods.      
Li Bing made a very simple but critical discovery.
By that time, Sichuan was already salt. producing area.
As we all know, as early as 3000 B, salt has been produced in Sichuan. C.
But it was Li Bing who found that the source of salt was not natural salt water, but it was oozing out of the ground. In 252 B. C.
He ordered the drilling of the world's first salt wells.      
The opening of these first wells is wide and more like an open pit, although some wells have a depth of more than 300 feet.
As the Chinese learn how to drill, the wells are getting narrower and deeper.      
But sometimes the person who dug the well becomes inexplicably weak, sick, lying down and dying.
Occasionally, a huge explosion kills the entire crew, or spews flames from the holes.
Gradually, the salt workers and their communities realized that an evil spirit came up from some of the underworld from the holes they dug. By 68 B. C.
Two Wells, one in Sichuan and one in neighboring Shaanxi, became the place where evil spirits appeared.
The governors of the provinces visit these wells and provide services every year.
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100 well workers understand that these disturbances are caused by an invisible substance, and they find holes that come out of the ground, ignite them, and start placing jars nearby.
They can cook with it.
Soon they learned to insulate the bamboo tubes with mud and salt water, and to transport the invisible power into the boiling house.
These boiling houses are open sheds where several pots of salt water are cooked until the water evaporates and leaves salt crystals. By A. D.
200, there is an iron pot heated by a gas flame in the boiling house.
This is the first natural gas use in the world.      
Salt-making workers learned to drill a narrow shaft so that they could go deeper.
They take out the salt water with a long bamboo tube and the bamboo tube is mounted on the shaft.
The bottom of the tube is a leather valve.
When the long tube is pulled out, the weight of the water forces the valve to close.
The tube is then hung on a tank where a poke on the stick opens the valve and releases the salt water into the tank.
The water tank is connected to the bamboo pipe leading to the boiling house.
Other bamboo tubes, just under the wellhead, are used to capture the leaking gas.      
Initially it may be that bamboo pipes made in Sichuan have resistance to salt, which kills algae and microorganisms that cause decay.
Joint is the sea
A mixture of mud or tung oil and lime.
From the pipeline project of the Sichuan salt water plant, Chinese people across the country learned to build irrigation and pipeline systems.
Farms, villages, and even houses are built with bamboo pipes.
In the Middle Ages, when Norman conquered Britain, the bureaucratic Su Dongpo, born in Sichuan, was building complex bamboo City pipelines.
Large bamboo water pipes were installed in Hangzhou in 1089 and Guangzhou in 1096.
Holes and vents were installed to handle the blockage and airbag.      
The salt merchants spread bamboo tubes in the countryside, looking as chaotic as the web of a monster spider.
Pipes are laid on the landscape, using gravity as much as possible, lifting like a roller coaster, cycling to create a long-term downhill.       In the mid-
In the 11 th century, when King Harold failed to successfully defend Britain from the Normans, salt merchants in Sichuan were developing impact drilling, the most advanced drilling technology in the world in the next seven or eight centuries.      
A hole about 4 inch in diameter is passed by dropping a heavy 8-
Guide the foot bar through the bamboo tube with a sharp iron drill bit so that it can keep banging on the same place.
The worker stood on a wooden pole and his weight was offset by eight.
The pole at the other end.
He rode up and down the lever, seesaw-
Like, causing bit to drop over and over again.
Three to five years later, a few hundred feet deep well will encounter salt water.      
In 1066, Harold was killed by an arrow in Hastings. China believed that the weapon was invented by Huangdi in prehistoric times.
When Harold died, the Chinese were using gunpowder, one of the first major industrial uses of salt.
The Chinese have found that mixing a salt known as the nitrate-potassium nitrate with sulfur and carbon, creates a powder that, when ignited, expands rapidly into a gas, thus
In the 12 th century, when the European Crusaders failed to seize Jerusalem from the hands of the pagan Arabs, the Arabs began to learn the secret powder of China.
Li has lived at the most important crossroads in Chinese history.
For centuries, the merger between the warring states ended up creating a unified China.
The unified state was the culmination of centuries of intellectual debate about the nature of government and the rights of rulers.
Salt is at the center of this debate.
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For centuries, the Chinese government has seen salt as a source of state revenue.
In China, the text of salt tax mentioned in the 20 th century has been discovered. C.
The ancient characters of salt, Yan, are hieroglyphs in three parts.
The lower display tool, the upper left is the imperial officer, and the upper right is the salt water.
Therefore, the word salt is written to describe the state's control over its manufacture.      
For the sake of health, and even for the sake of survival, all humans need a substance, which will be a good source of taxes.
Everyone has to buy it, so everyone will support the country through salt tax.      
The debate over salt tax stems from Confucius, who is between 551 and 479. C.
In the Confucius era, the rulers of various countries in China gathered today's so-called think tanks, in which selected thinkers advised the rulers and debated between them.
Confucius is one of the advisers to these intellectuals.
He is considered the first moral philosopher in China. he is troubled by human weaknesses and wants to raise the standard of human behavior.
He told us that being kind to fellow human beings is as important as respecting God, and he emphasized the importance of respecting parents.      
The students of Confucius and their students have established the so-called Confucian ideological system.
Confucius 'grandson's student Mencius taught the teachings in a book called Mencius.
Confucius 'thoughts are also recorded in the Analects of Confucius, which is the foundation of many Chinese ideas and the source of many Chinese proverbs.      
In the two and a half centuries between Confucius and Li Bing, China is a group of countless small countries that are constantly in a state of war.
The rulers have fallen, and their kingdom has been swallowed up by the more powerful nations that will then struggle with other surviving nations.
Mencius traveled in China and explained to the rulers that they passed"
Mission from Heaven"
Based on moral principles, God will deprive them of their mission if they are not wise and moral leaders, and they will lose power.      
But there is also another philosophy called Legalism.
Legal activists insist that the survival of a country must rely on secular institutions that effectively exercise power.
One of the famous Legalists is a man named Shang, who provides legal advice to Qin. Prominent chin)state.
Respect for elders and traditions should not interfere with reforms, clean up inefficient institutions and replace them with more effective and pragmatic projects, Shang said.
The Legalists strive to eliminate the nobility, so that the country can reward and promote on the basis of achievements.      
The Legalist school has a new idea about salt.
The first written text on salt management in China is tube, which contains the economic advice of a minister from 685 to 643 years old. C.
The anger of the country's rulers.
Historians agree that tube is actually written around 300 B. C.
When only seven countries are still there, and the eastern qi, which is largely affected by toralism, is struggling to survive with the Western Qin, it will eventually lose.      
One of the ideas put forward by the minister is to fix the price of the salt at a level above the purchase price so that the state can import the salt and sell it at a profit. "
Therefore, we can get income from products produced in other countries. "
The consultant went on to point out thatsalt-
People in the production area are sick because of the lack of it, and in desperation they are willing to pay a higher price.
The conclusion of tube is"
Salt is of great importance to maintaining the basic economy of our country. " (Continues. . . )
Mark Kurlansky extracts from the salt.
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2002 Mark Kurlansky.
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A version of this transcript appears in the national edition printing in February 24, 2002, with the title "sales ".