Salt Veins: The Dingzuo Intangible Heritage Chronicles

The life of an ordinary person is the history of China. Xia Wuchen, a senior at Dingzuo High School, uses a shard from the backwater jar left by his grandmother as a “key to the gate,” transmigrating back to the years between 1951 and 1992. He helps his great-grandfather calculate the drying-slope angle at the White Salt Well, his grandfather drive yak caravans along the horse trails, his grandfather avoid a landslide on the road by Lugu Lake, and his father win his mother's heart. Through the eyes of a transmigrator, he writes the full three-thousand-year history of Dingzuo: drawing brine with leather bags, the Zha people carrying water in pottery jars, horse caravans on the Runyan Ancient Road, Yi hearths, bronze dragon heads, Dingzuo's changes, and road building. Intangible cultural heritage isn't dust in a museum. It's the calluses on Grandma's hands, the brine on Great-Grandpa's feet, and the landslide dust in Grandpa's work shed. I am Xia Wuchen, and I wrote this book. Once it was finished, they became history. (“Reading Intangible Heritage” writing contest: A tribute to the White Salt Well's salt drying, the Runyan Ancient Road, and Mosuo culture.)