When you visit Yanchi, you must have a heart to pay homage to the past. Yanchi, also known as salt lake or salt sea, is a resource-based inland lake. It is one of the three largest sodium sulfate salt lakes in the world, and the other two are Utah Salt Lake in the United States and Cuciuc Salt Lake in Siberia, Russia. It is also the largest industrial production base of inorganic salts in China, which is famous for its rich "Lu salt". In the Spring and Autumn Period, it belonged to Xie Liang City in the Jin Dynasty, and in the Han Dynasty, it was also called "Xiechi". It is one of the oldest salt ponds in China with a history of 5,000 years, which can be traced back to the era of the Yellow Emperor. According to the note in Postscript IV of the History of Taoism: "There is a salt temple ten miles southeast of Anyi today, and Lu Chenyun said,' Su Sha, the courtier of the Yellow Emperor, is the god who cooks salt, and he is called the salt Sect, so he respects it. "It can be seen that Su Sha is the earliest salt pond god worshipped by human beings. But the temple village in Anyidong is still there, but unfortunately the temple is gone.
The pool god enshrined in the pool temple is to shelter the salt pond, which is at its feet. To the south of Yuncheng, it is wrapped in silver, like smoke and fog. From a distance, smoke, green haze and clouds are intertwined, and the faint Zhongtiao Mountain is like a dragon that has disappeared from beginning to end. As for the formation of the salt pond, it is said that when the Yellow Emperor broke Chiyou, he cut it here, and its blood accumulated into brine, so the water in the pond was red. "Overview of Hedong Salt Law Scenery of Yanchi" says: "Xuanyuan family slaughtered Chiyou in the field of Zhuolu, and the blood entered the pool and turned into brine. Now there is Chiyou City in the south of Chi, which is said to be its burial place. " Shen Kuo, a famous scientist in the Song Dynasty, wrote in Meng Xi Talk: "It only takes 120 Li to solve the national salt problem. After a long rain, the water of four mountains has never overflowed; The drought never stopped. The halogen color is red, and under the Han Spring, it is called human-god blood. " Salt Lake is derived from the blood of Chiyou. Although it is an ancient legend, it is still beautiful to read under the lamp.
Today's people imitate the past and have their own advantages. However, from a scientific point of view, Yuncheng Yanchi was caused by orogeny and crustal changes, resulting in the fracture of the northern foot of Zhongtiaoshan, the appearance of a long and narrow depression zone and the gradual formation of a lake. With the passage of time, potash, limestone, magnesium salt, sulfate and salt in the water gradually combined with the early siltation layer. After a long period of natural evaporation, salts precipitated to form a thick seam, thus forming a salt lake. The salt it produces is made of salt water exposed to the sun, or it is the creation of nature. Its color is white, its taste is pure, its impurities are few, and it contains a variety of sodium and calcium substances, forming a unique resource, which is not only unique in China, but also extremely rare in the world. Liu Zongyuan, one of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties, called Yanchi "the treasure of Jin", with green hills in the south, heavy buildings in Fengcheng in the north, Anyi in the east, Jiezhou in the west and Longxi in the east.
In the vast lake, the blue waves are rippling, the salt is like snow, and the silver is shining as far as the eye can see. As a master of literature, Liu Zongyuan naturally loves Yanchi in his hometown. In Jinwen, he wrote affectionately: "Silent and invisible, floating and mysterious. Looking back for a moment, the snowy area is hundreds of miles ... like meteorites and the ground, flickering and breaking the ice." As soon as you read it, you will know that the emotional color is extremely strong. The hand of a famous artist is a gesture. In a few words, its form, connotation and implication are all on the paper. Therefore, people also vividly call Yanchi "Silver Lake". Walking, I saw the lake beach smoke, saltpeter fields looming, ups and downs. Those glauber's salt, crystal white as snow, are piled up on the dam platform one by one, just like silver islands standing on the lake, and their reflections are scattered in the lake, rippling with the wind. Very spectacular. Seeing such a magnificent scene, Mr. Tian Han was full of passion and soul-stirring, and became a good sentence of "a pool of snow through the ages" Seen from a distance, salt lake is a typical closed-flow lake, with high surroundings and low middle. It looks like a delicate white marble, which fell from the sky. It's amazing. Because the salt lake is separated from the surrounding water systems, including the Yellow River and its tributaries Fenhe River, Sushui River and Huihe River, it forms a naturally closed "dead water lake", so it is also called "dead sea".
We should thank the creator, who gave us magical treasures. Yanchi is not only a scenic spot, but also nurtured the growth of the Chinese nation with its own milk. According to written records, the pool salt produced in salt lake is about 1000 years earlier than sea salt and 21000 years earlier than well salt. Historians have proved that the consumption of salt is another major discovery after the invention of drilling wood for fire. Taking this as a symbol, human beings ended the era of eating animals and drinking blood and evolved into a new stage of civilization. Just like this, in the history of our country, from the Yellow Emperor to the Yao, Shun and Yu tribes, most of them were built around salt lakes and became economic, political and cultural centers. In Xia, Shang and Zhou to Qin dynasties, salt has become the economic pillar of the feudal society of Lu. By the Han Dynasty, Lu salt was exported to Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Gansu, Shaanxi and other places. After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, marketing "went out of Qin Long in the west, Fan and Deng in the south, Yan in the north and Zhou and Song in the east" became the necessities of people's life and the main source of the imperial treasury, which tied the lifeline of the country. Therefore, in order to stabilize the world, it is reasonable for the court to build temples here to protect the rich salt industry.
The passage of time makes us gradually forget the original face of salt lake, which is a record of culture to the times and leads us to see the back of our ancestors. A closer look at the stone carving "Hedong Salt Pond Map" seems to be the production scene of salt ponds in Wanli period of Ming Dynasty. I saw the wind blowing at the beginning of the mountain, salt ponds rippling, and many salt workers were working hard. They have no clothes on their bodies and no shoes on their feet, and they endure "smoke in midsummer, irrigation with salt water, disaster of rigid servants, and suffering from hunger and thirst" and "they are diligent and embarrassed, and their hands and feet are stripped bare". Next to them, salt piles are scattered all over Chi Pan like hills, which shows an old proverb: Man makes history. Ancient stone carving seems a little difficult. Years of wind and rain have cured many stubborn diseases, leaving people's unchanging heart in the salt pond.
Looking through history is to understand history more clearly. The progress of mankind is ultimately the return of human nature, thus achieving the harmony of human society itself and the harmony between man and nature. The beautiful salt lake scenery provides an ideal habitat and breeding place for birds and becomes a free kingdom for birds. The reeds by the lake are extremely important. In summer, the eyeful of green is like a jasper barrier. In autumn, reed flowers fly like a silver snowfield, which is the most important vegetation to maintain the ecological balance of salt lakes and an important raw material for salt making. Suaeda salsa in the lake is even more heroic in the face of salty brine. Whenever spring comes, it flies into a rage, adding infinite vitality to the salt lake. What is even more incredible is that there is a plankton Artemia with strong vitality and fecundity in the high-concentration brine of this salt lake. It produces seeds in winter and adults in spring, and consciously adjusts the composition of brine, so that the eternal salt lake will continue to glow with new vitality and become the eternity of human and natural life.