Shi Qigang

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Shi Qigang, Male, Unspecified, from Xiangshan, Zhejiang, is a third-batch national representative bearer of Shaiyanjiyi (Ⅷ-153). The tradition is documented in Xiangshan, Zhejiang. Within the regional tradition and school record of Shaiyanjiyi in Xiangshan, Zhejiang: The Yangpu Peninsula salt fields in Danzhou City, Hainan Province, cover more than 750 mu, and are an important local sea-salt producing area, with more than 7,300 large and small stone solar-salt troughs, some of which have existed for over a thousand years. In the Yuan dynasty, salt-making by solar evaporation was called 'aobo' (boiling waves), and the salt-producing craft developed further. After the Yuan dynasty, the methods of scraping mud and leaching brine, and of sprinkling ash to produce brine, were gradually adopted. After the Jiaqing reign of the Qing dynasty, the Xiangshan salt industry introduced the slab-solar crystallization and the vat-bed solar crystallization methods from Zhoushan, bringing about a great transformation in the salt-making craft. After the 1960s, the flat-spread solar method was tested successfully; Xiangshan's sea-salt production began to adopt new techniques, and machine production gradually replaced some of the heavy manual operations, yet the traditional handcraft of solar sea-salt making was preserved. The traditional solar salt-making craft used in the Yangpu salt fields belongs to the slab-solar method, and has a history of more than one thousand years.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

National representative bearer of the Sun-Drying Salt Technique (the Sea Salt Solar Evaporation Technique), a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. A sea salt solar evaporation technician. Xiangshan has a long history of solar salt making: in the Tang dynasty salt was already being boiled by local methods, and by the Song dynasty the methods of scraping mud and leaching brine and of sprinkling ash to make brine were in use. Traditional salt making in Xiangshan was mainly manual and little affected by machine production; seawater was the basic raw material, and the coastal tidal flats and their salty mud were used together with evaporation by sunlight and wind, with brine made by manual work such as leaching and sprinkling and then crystallised into raw salt by boiling, by solar drying or by wind. Within the documented technical tradition of Shaiyanjiyi in Xiangshan, Zhejiang: Solar salt-making is an ancient craft, closely connected with people's daily life and productive labor. The sea-salt solar craft takes seawater as its basic raw material, making use of coastal tidal flats and their saline mud (or artificially prepared ash-laden earth). Combined with solar and wind evaporation, through manual labor such as leaching and sprinkling, brine is produced; then by methods such as fire-boiling, sun-drying, or wind-blowing, the brine is naturally crystallized into crude salt. The entire solar-making process consists of a dozen or so process steps, carried out purely by hand, and embodies a wealth of production know-how. The sea-salt solar craft of Xiangshan County, Zhejiang Province, has a long history, and its production technique is a microcosm of nearly a millennium of China's traditional sea-salt production skill. Historical records of Xiangshan salt-making by solar evaporation already appear in works such as the 'New Book of Tang · Treatise on Geography.' Its process first lets the high-tide seawater flood the seawater storage pond, so as to soak the sand and mud in the solar salt-making mud fields (salt pans). After the tide recedes, the sand and mud that were submerged in seawater is turned and raked, then sun-dried for two or three days. Once dry, dry thatch is laid underneath and the material is tamped into the built-up filtering pond (salt-mud pond). Then water from the seawater storage pond is poured into the filtering pond to soak the sand and mud; the seawater slowly seeps to the bottom of the salt-mud pond, then flows through stone crevices into the brine pond beside it, which lies below ground level. The next morning, once the brine in the pond has accumulated to a certain amount and settled and cleared, it is poured directly into stone troughs; after a long half-day of sun exposure, salt crystallizes by the afternoon. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Archival Record of Process Steps": The entire solar-making process consists of a dozen or so process steps, carried out purely by hand, and embodies a wealth of production know-how.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Male, of Han ethnicity, born in May 1959, died in January 2017, a native of Xiangshan County, Zhejiang Province. Drawing on practice and on theoretical reflection, he summed up his experience of solar salt making and passed it on to salt workers at the salt fields through meetings, training courses, radio broadcasts and blackboard notices, reaching more than two thousand person-times; the output and quality of raw salt at the fields rose year by year, and the income of the salt workers increased accordingly.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Shi Qigang · National Representative Bearer Archive