Salt drying technology (sea salt drying technology)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: salt drying technology (sea salt drying technology)

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Item No.: 936

Project No.: VIII - 153

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: traditional art

Region: Hainan Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Protected by: Danzhou Cultural Center

Brief introduction of salt drying technology (sea salt drying technology)

Applicant: Danzhou City, Hainan Province

Drying salt is an ancient skill, which is closely related to people's daily life and production labor. Sea salt drying technology takes sea water as the basic raw material, uses seashore beach and its salty mud (or artificial mixed lime soil), combines sunlight and wind evaporation, and makes brine by hand work such as sprinkling and sprinkling, and then makes brine crystallize into original salt by fire frying, sun drying and wind blowing. The whole drying process has more than ten processes, which are purely manual operation, including rich production technology experience.

Xiangshan County, Zhejiang Province has a long history of sea salt drying, and its production technology is the epitome of the traditional production technology of sea salt in China for nearly a thousand years. The history of salt drying in Xiangshan has been recorded in the book of geography of the new Tang Dynasty. In Yuan Dynasty, salt drying was called "boil wave", and salt making technology was further developed. After Yuan Dynasty, the methods of scraping mud to drench brine and splashing ash to make brine were gradually adopted. After Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty, Xiangshan salt industry introduced the methods of plate drying crystallization and tank drying crystallization from Zhoushan, which realized the great change of salt making technology. After the 1960s, with the success of the experiment, Xiangshan's sea salt production began to adopt new technology, and gradually replaced part of the heavy manual operation with machine production, but still retained the traditional craft of sea salt drying.

The salt field of Yangpu Peninsula in Danzhou City, Hainan Province covers an area of more than 750 mu. It is an important local sea salt producing area. There are more than 7300 large and small salt drying stone troughs, some of which have existed for more than 1000 years. The traditional salt drying process used in Yangpu salt field belongs to plate drying method, which has a history of more than 1000 years. The process is to let the sea water at high tide submerge the sea storage tank to soak the sediment in the salt mud land (salt field). After the ebb tide, the sediment soaked in seawater is raked and exposed to the sun for two or three days. After the sediment is dry, dry grass is laid and rammed into the stacked filter (salt mud pool). Then the water in the sea storage tank is poured into the filter to soak the sediment in the tank. After the seawater slowly seeps to the bottom of the salt mud tank, it flows into the brine tank below the ground through the stone crevice. In the morning of the next day, after a certain amount of brine is accumulated and settled, it is directly poured into the stone trough. After more than half a day's exposure, it can crystallize into salt in the afternoon. Yangpu salt field is a well preserved ancient salt field in China at present. The traditional salt drying technique here is a precious historical and cultural heritage left in the development of China's salt industry.