Ziliujing District, formerly

romanized In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...

as Tzuliutsing, is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

of Zigong in

Sichuan Province Sichuan is a Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capita ...

, China. The district covers and had a population of 330,000 people in 2005.

History

According to Fang, China has always managed

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

and

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, with Sichuan containing many salt deposits together with

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

, especially in Ziliujing. "Invisible gas fire" was mentioned as early as the Han dynasty, gas wells were taxed by 1662, gas was used in one tenth of the salt evaporating plants by 1821 (the remainder using wood or charcoal), and by 1857 gas was the more common fuel. Li Jung describes the infrastructure around the salt business, "the building where money is handled is called the cashier's quarters, that immediately above the well is called the pestle quarters, that where the buffaloes turn the wheel to bring up the brine is called the wheel and buffalo quarters, that where the salt is stored in buckets is called the bucket quarters, that where the brine is evaporated is called the oven quarters. The wells used stone casing for the first hundred feet or so followed by wood for another . An iron drill weighing up to is attached to a bamboo rope and when brine is reached, the well is called "success" or if no brine is reached by 3000 feet it is called "useless well". A well was drilled to in depth to reach the heaviest brine, the gas rising to the surface with a "rumbling noise", where the gas was contained by a wooden basin placed upside down over the well, from which protruded

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

or wooden pipes, transporting the gas up to 1000 feet to salt evaporating boilers. Some gas wells serviced up to 700 boilers. Separate pipes carried the brine.

Administrative divisions

Ziliujing District administers 9 subdistricts and 3 towns: * Wuxingjie Subdistrict () * Dongxingsi Subdistrict () * Xinjie Subdistrict () * Guojia'aojie Subdistrict () * Dangui Subdistrict () * Xueyuan Subdistrict () * Shuping Subdistrict () * Hongqi Subdistrict () * Gaofeng Subdistrict () * Zhongquan Town () * Rongbian Town () * Feilongxia Town ()

Gallery

File:Salt evaporation.png, Salt evaporation in Sichuan, 1882 File:Drilling a well.png, Drilling a well in Sichuan, 1882

Notes

References

External links