"Salt" is our common table salt.

The "Etymology of Sichuan Dialects" says that in Sichuan, lump salt boiled with salt water drawn from deep wells is called "Yanba".

The original meaning of the word "salt" is "to cook brine in a vessel". "Shuowen" records: What is born is called brine, and what is cooked is called salt. Legend has it that during the time of the Yellow Emperor, there was a prince named Susha who boiled sea water and fried it into salt. The colors were green, yellow, white, black and purple. The Chinese began to cook salt around the time of Shennong (Yan Emperor) and Huang Emperor.

The origin of salt:

In ancient times, there were three natural salt springs in eastern Chongqing and western Hubei: Wuxi Baoyuan Mountain Salt Spring (Daning Salt Field), Pengshui Yushan Zhenfu Niushan Salt Spring and Qingjiang Salt Spring in Changyang County, Hubei Province. Baoyuan Mountain is the earliest known salt spring in China. It has a history of 5,000 years and is still flowing. In ancient times, before the invention of deep well brine mining technology, the Three Gorges natural salt spring was the earliest source of salt supply in inland areas. The Ba people control this precious resource.

Wuxi Baoyuan Mountain Salt Spring (Daning Saltworks), a sparsely populated and poor place, was the earliest rich reservoir in China in ancient times. The entire salt field is 5 miles long. People come and go on the salt field, and hundreds of boats compete for water on the river, forming the spectacle of "thousands of salt smoke". The salt of the entire Hanzhong Basin, Lianghu Basin, Sichuan Basin, and western Hubei region must be supplied by Daning Salt Farm. Ningchang Town was a big city in ancient times. At its most prosperous, it became a town with a population of more than 14,000, with business and travel from all directions gathered, and about 100,000 people made a living from the salt industry.

The Daning Salt Farm is surrounded by soaring mountains that locals say are difficult for even apes to climb. Wuyan was the first to leave Sichuan. It was the industrious Ba people who followed the narrow and dangerous mountain road and crossed the Qinling Mountains. The Ba people opened up 4,000 miles of salt transport mountain roads. Wu salt is transported to the mountain roads in western Hubei and southern Shaanxi. There are 8 salt roads in the high mountains. The locals call these roads "Qinchu Avenue".

At the same time, four hundred miles of salt transportation waterways were opened. The Daning River is an important tributary of the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Wu salt uses it to travel from the salt field to Wushan, and then down the Yangtze River or upstream to be transported to all parts of the country. The third is the 300-mile salt diversion plank road. The Ba people built a plank road about 300 miles long along the bank of Daning River, and the rolling salt springs of Wuxi River went straight down to Wushan Mountain along the Daning River. The ancient Cubans monopolized salt, a necessity for mankind, and called it "salt".