The salt wells of Zigong

Zigong lies in the south of the Sichuan basin, in the hills around the Fuxi river, where brine has been drawn from deep beneath the ground for many centuries. The brine wells of the district made it one of the great salt-producing places of China, and the trade that grew around them shaped the town and the cooking of the surrounding basin. Fuchsia Dunlop, in The Food of Sichuan, treats the salt of Zigong as part of the foundation on which the region's table was built.

Salt is the first seasoning of any kitchen, and in a landlocked province it could not come from the sea. Sichuan drew it instead from underground brine, which was lifted from wells bored into the rock and then boiled down in iron pans until the salt crystallised. The drilling of such wells, narrow shafts sunk by percussion to great depths, is among the notable technical achievements of Chinese history, and the district of Zigong became its centre. Natural gas found in some of the same deep boreholes was in time piped to fuel the evaporating pans, so that the one resource served the working of the other. The trade in salt carried wealth into the basin, and with it the merchants, boatmen and labourers who needed feeding. Dunlop connects the vigour of the Sichuan table with the habits of a populous, commercial region in which people ate well, ate out and valued strong seasoning. Zigong is still spoken of in Sichuan as a town of keen eaters, with a cooking of its own that is notably hot, salty and bold in flavour. Dishes associated with it, such as cold-dressed rabbit and fiery preparations of beef, rely on the generous use of chilli, Sichuan pepper Zanthoxylum bungeanum and salt in combination. The salt itself matters in the kitchen beyond simple seasoning. Sichuan's great preserved foods, the pickled vegetables kept in brine in earthenware jars, the fermented broad bean paste known as doubanjiang, and the cured meats of the winter months, all depend upon salt in quantity, and the abundance of local salt made such preservation practical. Each of these in turn becomes a source of savour in the finished dish, so that the brine of the wells reaches the table by several roads. The cook who understands this sees salt in Sichuan as a structure of flavour and not only a measure of saltiness. The wells are now remembered as much as worked. The old derricks of bamboo and timber that once stood over the boreholes survive in the district, and the history of the industry is kept in a museum devoted to it in the town. For the cook, the lesson of Zigong is geographic: a province far from any coast built a rich and assertive cuisine on salt drawn from the rock beneath its hills, and the character of that cooking is inseparable from the fact.

The cooking of Zigong is known in Sichuan for its boldness, with salt, chilli and Sichuan pepper used freely in dishes served cold and hot alike. Cold-dressed rabbit and richly seasoned beef preparations are counted among the town's characteristic dishes, and they are eaten with rice and pickled vegetables that carry the salt of the brine jar to the table.