Salt with Everything

Non-guests need a ticket to look around Wu's old home, as this is the high-point of the official walking tour. No cars are allowed inside Heijing, where the only permitted form of transport is a horse-drawn cart.

It is still a small town, with just a single main street running parallel to the Longchuan River and, behind that, a handful of alleys boxed into the spaces remaining before steps begin climbing the foot of Mount Wuchun. From the Yuan Dynasty stone bridge at the south end of town, a 20-minute stroll could take you via Heijing's oldest salt well, the Black Cow Well (so named because a cow is said to have fallen in and turned into a rock), all the way to the north end of the main street, where the Sunday market gathers next to a decrepit salt factory. A few steps further and the town ends at the 7-metre wide, 11-metre tall and 385-metre long Qing'and Dam, built in 1716 to protect Heijing from flash floods rushing off Mount Wuchun and down Dragon Gully.

Beyond that is a bumpy two-kilometre track leading to the Salt Museum, where salt is still produced for the edification of tourists and the satisfaction of traditional tastes: a cup of tea in Heijing is likely to include a dash of salt, while the town's signature dish is a salty chicken based on the fowl that workers once prepared in the factories' spare salt-roasting pans. It's a splendid museum with photographs covering 100 years of local history, but you will need to be with someone who can read Chinese to get the most out of it.

The Sunday market reflects Heijing's current situation. Day-trippers and weekenders from Kunming jam the street, but aside from a few snacks and salt mementoes, the market doesn't really cater to them. Horses and donkeys are still traded down by the river, while peasants from the mountain villages hawk vegetables, chickens and pigs to the townsfolk.

Almost no tourists visit from Monday to Friday, so the town still has a life of its own, combining a strong sense of history with a pleasing lack of commercialization. Catch it while you can.

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