Yesterday I was attracted by a documentary film of CCTV on salt terrace fields in Yanjing 盐井. Immediately I knew that it would be a destination of our next china discovery trip.

Early this year, we traveled to Yuanyang’s magnificent rice terrace and Luoping’s breathtaking rapeseed flower fields in Yunnan. We can’t help exclaiming in our Luoping Guide that it is rather amazing when one considers that the farms were created by the farmers as a response to the natural limitations of the land. Yet they are like a work of art.

Here it is, another piece of art that is waiting for us to discover, near a small town, called Yanjing, located in Tibet’s Mangkang county, close to the Yunnan-Tibet border.

Thousands of salt fields were built on steep slopes by wood-pillars, mud, and pebbles, perched on the Lanchang River. Fields are poured into salty water fetched by women from salt well, to collect salt after one to four days of water evaporation. To admire stunning salt fields, one should walk down to the river bank, cross a bridge and go to the opposite side.

As usual, most travellers pass by Yanjing without stopping on their way from Deqin, Yunnan to Tibet. Yanjing remains quiet. Tibetan and Naxi people live peacefully together. Yanjing also has a Catholic church, the only Catholic Church in Tibet.

Links:

Salt Well Town on the 'Roof of the World'
Some pictures on this article in Chinese