laitimes

Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry

Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry
Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry

Zou Jun, mayor of Aiye Town, introduced: These stone slabs are all trampled into potholes by the salt horse gang cattle team and the salt transfer workers, and when it rains, they will be filled with two ditches of rainwater.

Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry

Walking along a horizontal street, every household is almost all small green tiles, wooden strings of walls, down more than a hundred irregular ancient stone ladders, that is, I saw a huge stone standing on the side of the dock, on the book "The first beach of the Salt Transport Ancient Road", an ancient and heavy feeling, spontaneously born!

International online news: Aiye Ancient Town is located at the western end of the west gate of Zigong City, also known as Aiye Beach, known as the first beach of the Salt Transport Ancient Road, from which to the east is the Baili Xushui River famous "Bali Qinhuai", and is connected to Gongjing Old Street. The nearly 1,000-year-old salt industry has accumulated the profound historical, cultural and natural heritage of Aiye, and is the ancient town of Xichangjing Salt and the hub of salt transportation. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the villagers here found salt water, grass and trees to be tormented, and then they obtained salt, which was exported by taking brine salt in large mouths. It has both the first weir of the waterway of Sichuan salt and the westward transport of Sichuan salt, and the land starting place of Bayan West Transport, becoming a rich town with tea shops and hotels in history, extending to the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, and is the distribution center of salt transport merchants and travelers in history. The ancient town now retains the traditional houses of the Ming and Qing dynasties with wooden structures, water and land salt transport stone beaches, ship troughs, weir locks, ancient post roads, ancient bridges, ancient salt wharves, etc., which can be used by tourists to hang and recall the grand situation of salt production and transportation in that year. Surrounded by water on three sides, Aiye Ancient Town has a unique natural, ecological and cultural landscape, is a natural summer resort integrating natural ecology, history and culture, and folk customs, and is a splendid pearl of Jingyan cultural tourism and Zigong, the capital of Jingyan.

Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry

The thousand-year history of production and marketing of Zigong salt industry has contributed to the formation of the "salt industry ancient road". The salt road has preserved ancient salt wells, ancient salt roads, salt industry legends, salt industry festivals and folk customs related to "salt", these material and intangible cultural heritage, are extremely precious "living cultural relics".

Zigong Aiye Town: "Living Cultural Relics" of the Thousand Year Salt Industry

Descend the stairs along a smooth bluestone slab road that leads to the famous Asahis River Ancient Salt Road Pier.

The core scenic area of the ancient town is composed of three streets and one river and baili Xushui River deep water Tuowan and other scenic spots, with a radius of 13 hectares, an average altitude of 340 meters, a pleasant climate and lush vegetation. The main streets, alleys and houses are mostly the architectural pattern of the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the people, built according to the Tuotan Beach, the height is staggered, showing the small green tiles of the southern Sichuan people's houses, the style and environment of the wooden frame, and there are many historical and cultural protection units in the scenic area, including the ancient road hengjie, the first beach of salt transport, the salt transport wharf, the first weir of the cascade waterway, the ancient bridge of Pingkang, the large trough, the four sea wells, the Hu family compound, the Tiangong Hall, the Yangxing Temple, the Han tomb group and other sites and relics. In 2009, it was approved as a provincial historical and cultural town and a provincial natural and cultural heritage.

Aiye Beach is a huge stone moraine beach with a length of about 160 meters and a width of more than 50 meters in the Xushui River, and is the largest rocky beach on the Xushui-Puxi River. In the 35th year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty, a boat trough - a large trough was excavated along the Shi moraine beach of the Xushui River, which was only wide enough for one ship to pass, so as to facilitate the use of boats, no longer unloading on the beach, and has been approved as a provincial natural and cultural heritage.

In the 30th year of Guangxu (1903), FurongChang set up a weir bureau, built five weir locks in the Gongjing section of the Xushui River, zhongqiao, zhongqiao, and Wuhuangdong, and extended down to Lei Gong Beach and the artesian well old and new bridge, a total of seven, layer by layer interception, increase the water level, "throttling and flowing, the water sounds like a waterfall", in the form of cascade relay transfer of goods, this cascade salt transport water conservancy project series, 11 years earlier than the Panama Canal (completed in 1914), should be the earliest in the world.

According to the records, the waterway flows from the Jingpuxi River to Fushun into the Tuojiang River, the north upstream and downstream salt to all parts of Shuzhong, the southward water into the Yangtze River, transporting Yun, Gui, Xiang, hubei, a waterway, reaching half of China. (Contributed by: Sichuan Economic Daily, all photos by: Wu Guanwei photography)