Yuncheng: Emperor Shun's Tomb and the Salt Lake (A September Journey through Henan and Shanxi)

I arrived in Yuncheng around noon and checked into a chain hotel near the train station.

After lunch and a short rest, I followed the advice of a friend in Yuncheng and set off to pay my respects at Emperor Shun's Tomb.

I first learned of this revered ancestor of Chinese civilization from the verse: 'Spring breezes stir a thousand willow branches, six hundred million souls all equal to Shun and Yao.'

The story of Yao and Shun's peaceful abdications is set right here. He was Emperor Shun, one of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors.

To this day, his descendants are said to number over 300 million, spread across dozens of surnames.

It is also said that the game of Go was invented by this venerable ancestor.

Compared with Lord Guan's Temple, Emperor Shun is the true forefather of us all, yet far fewer people seem to come here to worship. The two ancient cypresses in front of the tomb are over four thousand years old – almost contemporaries of Emperor Shun himself? They are extraordinarily rare. Beneath the Zhongtiao Mountains lies this saltwater lake, famously known as China's 'Dead Sea.' In the Yellow River basin of the Central Plains, a salt lake is a true rarity.

Apart from western China, this salt lake in the Central Plains is probably the largest of its kind.

In ancient times, salt production was a government monopoly. The salt from the Hedong Salt Lake, strategically located at the crossroads of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, likely supplied the entire Central Plains, nourishing the cradle of Chinese civilization.

'The lake covers more than 130 square kilometers! In the old days, they built a wall around it, starting from the Temple of the Salt God over there, enclosing the whole lake to prevent illegal private extraction,' a gentleman around my age told me. He had been a manager at the salt works years ago. 'Salt extraction stopped about thirty years ago. For a few years they mined mirabilite, but in the last three or four years, with environmental protection in mind, all of that has been shut down too.'

He also told me that seawater has a salinity of 1 percent, while this water reaches 30 percent. If you dip your hand in for a while, it turns white. No fish live in the lake, only a kind of mole cricket (?) – which are supplied exclusively to you folks in Shanghai.

As we spoke, the sun sank in the west, and the salt lake gradually took on a golden hue. I stopped and quietly savoured the sunset over the lake. Share: