Sichuan well salt origin

Sichuan well salt production area is Zigong.

Zigong is a famous well salt production place in Sichuan Province, and it has a long history of drilling wells to get brine for salt production. Sichuan salt industry from drilling wells, draw brine, brine transmission to frying salt, the division of labor is very fine, the process is difficult, engineering costs and equipment investment is quite a lot. It usually takes from one to four or five years to open a well, and at most it takes more than ten years or even several decades.

Drilling investment, shallow to thousands of taels, deep to ten thousand taels, and even the cost of three or four million taels without seeing the work of the person. Operating well stove business owners, most of the capital pengchong, to take the partnership system, in order to make the capital strong. In the Fu Rong production area, for example: Zigong investors (called guests) and landowners in the form of tenancy and shareholding to do wells, there is a "well of years" (or guest wells) and "descendants of the wells" of the points.

Development history:

The investors in the well salt production area were mainly merchants, especially Shaanxi and Shanxi merchants. They mostly started as salt merchants and operating pawnbrokers, and first started by controlling the transportation area of Sichuan salt.

To "rent cited on behalf of the sales" approach, to obtain a large number of profits, and then further control of the majority of Sichuan salt sales port, open salt stores in various places, and accumulate huge wealth; and ultimately more than with the local indigenous partnership, the commercial capital into the salt wells stove, transformed into industrial capital.

The salt workers who drew wells and burned stoves were mostly peasants who had lost their means of production and sold their labor on a job-for-job basis. Among them, there were both local natives and people from all counties in Sichuan, and the displaced people from Guizhou, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Yunnan, etc., who worked in the wells and stoves to make a living, were especially numerous.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Zigong well salt