Cloaking a slope along the Yunnan-Tibet Highway are some thinly cemented rectangular fields that have supported generations of lives who live on the mountains at an elevation of 2,700 meters.

Every year before the rainy season comes, the fields will be coated with a layer of white crystals. Women of all ages wearing traditional Naxi outfits will be seen dotting the fields and repeating a chore that has earned them a major source of income.

This is Yanjing Town - literally "salt field" town - of the Mekong County located at the juncture of the Sichuan-Tibet and the Yunnan-Tibet highways, 470 kilometres south of the Bangda Grasslands.

Yanjing was once a major source of salt production for the area running from northwestern Sichuan down into Yunnan. Because of its remoteness and its people - the only Naxi ethnic people living in the Tibet area as a compact community - this group can still exercise most of its unique customs.

Industrious women

It has been an age-old practice of these local people to evaporate natural brine on the salt fields of Yanjing, despite the modernized plants that mechanically pour out tons of salt across the country.

The favourable geographic location has bestowed on the town a subtle mixture of wind and sunshine to maximize salt production.

Along the turbulent Lancang River flowing through the gorge where Yanjing is located, two wells poke out of the water's surface. They are the source of the brine in the 3,700-odd boxy fields and have supported generations of local people. Their annual output reaches 1.5 million kilograms.

The industrious Naxi women carry wooden buckets on their backs and climb down the roughly one-metre wide wells to gather the brine. With loaded buckets, each weighing about 30 kilograms, they climb up the slope and pour the water into their own fields, then leave the rest to the weather.

Yanjing is located in a strategic point where wind constantly blows across the valley, and the sunlight is not very strong. Both conditions are good for the evaporation of brine.

Salt making stops in the summer when rain submerges both wells.

The Naxi ethnic minority, who now mainly live in Yunnan Province's Lijiang area, is well-known for their largely matriarchal social structure where women play a key role in performing daily duties.

The men, meanwhile, will transport and sell the salt to towns and villages.

Two cultures

With no written literature of annals or chronicles, Yanjing is a place full of history and mystery.

No one knows when and how the salt fields began growing on the slope. But according to the oral history, the ancient Qiang people owned these platinum fields some 1,000 years ago. The lucrative and essential white mineral initiated countless wars for possession of these fields and drew flocks of people to build new fields and develop communities over the past millennium.

In the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Yunnan-based Naxi ethnic people gained much power with the help of the Qing court, which supported the ethnic tribe with preferential policies. The Naxi people began to spread around the country, including Yanjing, where they took over the salt wells and developed their own community.

The Naxi power then weathered while the Tibetan's thrived, and Yanjing was soon under Tibetan control. Under the Tibetan governance, the Naxi people who remained in the ancient town underwent assimilation.

Tibetan culture has occupied everything from architecture and fashion to religion, except for the matriarchal structure and their language. The inhabitants still speak their own dialect to this day.

Two religions

Walking up the salty slope, is another amazing scene.

A Catholic Church has stood here for two centuries on the mountain as a sanctuary for the local people who are also faithful to Buddhism at the same time.

After a day's work, the local people will go here to pray in the only Catholic Church in the Tibetan region. It was built by a French missionary in 1820 and renovated some years ago.

According to Ah Ni, a Naxi ethnic nun in her 70s, the Bible was translated into Tibetan in 1830, and that translation is still used today.

No Buddhist temple can be found in Yanjing, yet people still regard themselves as Buddhists and worship the Eastern god in their homes after praying to the Western one in the church. Pictures or statues of Buddha are commonly found in local homes.

Their syncretized religious practices are as unique as their salt-making customs and have become an inseparable part of people's lives.

Its remoteness has isolated this ancient town and allowed it to retain many of its unique traditions. With so little interference from the outside, people living in this hidden world have carried on traditions passed on from their ancestors.

No one has tried to figure out how the twin wells gather the salty water, and no one knows why the two religions co-exist so harmoniously in this mysterious town.

How this town remains unaffected by the modernizations sweeping across the country is still hard to say. But modernity has already left some footprints.

When the Yunnan-Tibet Highway was completed some decades ago, Yanjing was finally linked to the outside world.

Motor vehicles join caravans in transporting salt to other parts of the region. The girls now adorn themselves with modern hair clips and wear blouses made of modern fabrics. Curious visitors are also peppering this salt town.

( China Daily August 14, 2002)