Recently, representatives of the last salt farmers from Fengxian and Jinshan areas gathered at the Shanghai Canghai Yantian Salt Culture Museum, where they talked about their own salt-making stories, showed the ancient salt-making process with real objects, and interpreted the wisdom and skills of salt people's lives. In order to further excavate and publicize the last salt culture in Shanghai, the museum hired six salt people to serve as folk song and folk customs consultants, salt making process consultants, language story consultants, and cultural and historical research consultants, so that these old salt people can serve as witnesses and inheritors of salt culture, and pass on the essence of salt culture from generation to generation.
Caojing Town, Jinshan District, is the oldest area of Shanghai and the earliest human activity, with ancient coastal ruins 6,000 years ago, as early as more than 2,000 years ago, Jinshan people mastered the method of extracting sea salt. Zhang Rong, who originally started a business in the center of Shanghai, came to Jiangzhuang Village, Caojing Town, by chance, and had a strong interest in the local Haiyan culture and history, and soon rented an old factory building in the village. Last year, the living customs of the salt people in Caojing Town were listed as a representative project of Jinshan District's intangible cultural heritage, and Zhang Rong became one of the inheritors of this project.
Walking into the "Salt Museum" embedded in the field, the museum treasures more than 300 pieces of collections related to the history of salt culture, with a variety of modern technologies such as display board graphics, physical display, magic wall large screen interactive system, etc., to reproduce the sand table in the process of boiling salt, such as opening up the beach, sea tide soaking, pouring ash to take the salt, frying the salt, dry mixing salt and other 5 flow steps, these real scenes vividly restore the real "sea salt" memory to people. Uncle Yu, an old salt farmer in Haiya Village, Caojing Town, saw these salt-making tools and crafts that had been with him for more than 30 years, and marveled that he had returned to the life scene and hard years of "resting on the tide of the sea and boiling water to make salt".
Up to now, the number of visitors to the Yangtze River Delta "Salt People" cultural tourism industry digital platform has reached more than 800,000 people, and more than 50 units and coastal county museums have served and cooperated, and salt culture has become a local brand. Since last year, the museum has also launched the "Salt Road with You" - the "Five Advances" project of the rural museum classroom, which will send salt culture knowledge classes and experience courses to communities, enterprises, schools, towns and elderly care institutions, so that more and more people can be influenced by salt culture through manual experience. The project won the first Shanghai Museum Excellence Education Project", and the case of "Yantu Youyi Salt Culture Series Course" was awarded the second prize of Outstanding Achievement of Off-campus Education Practice Course Cases in the Yangtze River Delta Region.
In recent years, with the creative exploration of the salt culture industry chain, the authorization letter of the digital platform for the cultural tourism industry of the Yangtze River Delta has been signed with the China Haiyan Museum and the Zigong Salt Industry History Museum, and gradually embarked on a path of "cultivating salt with culture". For example, the intangible cultural heritage course is cleverly combined with the local salt folk diet, such as the development of traditional delicacies such as salt-baked shrimp and salt-baked quail eggs, which are well received by various groups. In the 3rd Yangtze River Delta International Cultural Industry Expo, more than 20 kinds of salt cultural products such as sea salt shell paintings, sea salt herbal foot bath bags, sea salt essential oil handmade soaps, sea salt essential oil scrubs, and sea salt hot compress physiotherapy packages were widely praised by the industry.
"Salt culture comes from the field and nature, so it must be rooted in the countryside, and only in this way can the salt culture that is gradually disappearing be younger, more fashionable, and full of new ideas of the times." Zhang Rong said: "In the near future, the salt culture center will be upgraded on the basis of the first phase of the exhibition hall area of 480 square meters, and the second phase of the experience area of 6,600 square meters will be opened, focusing on the implementation of salt field work practice experience projects and cultural and creative experience courses, etc., to expand the connotation of salt culture and attract more young people to understand salt culture."