Salt Production Techniques in Ancient China: The Aobo Tu (review)

Reviews 283 technicians, failure to acknowledge die seriousness ofthe situation, reluctance to lose the competitive advantage, and taking the short-term view, to name just a few. The same gap between the rules and dieir implementation can be found in the courts. A judge, for example, might go scrupulously by the book in a case involving failure to live up to a contract and yet be unable to enforce penalties on the offending party ifit is a township enterprise, because oflocal interference. The second generalization is that decentralization in decision making has now gone too far. In the opinion ofmany of the authors it is time for the provincial government to reassert control and bring order out of chaos. With so many localities now free to make all kinds of investment decisions, there is an irrational duplication of tourist hotels, airports, office buildings, and so on, leading to misi management in the allocation ofresources. Similarly, decentralization in enforcement ofpollution regulations has frequently led to no enforcement or to ineffective outcomes because die upstream jurisdiction continues to pollute. Thus, the consensus ofthese authors seems to be that although economic progress as measured by growth has so far been extremely impressive, Guangdong may now be at a crossroads. Continued progress cannot be assured unless the problems described above are taken seriously and dealt widi. Charlotte Ikels Case Western Reserve University MM Yoshida Tora. SaZr Production Techniques in Ancient China: The Aobo Tu. Translated and revised by Hans Ulrich Vogel. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993. xxv, 309 pp. This book contains a translation ofYoshida Tora's Gendai seien gijutsu shiryö«Göha zu» no kenkyü-fu, «Göha zu» yakuchü (Tokyo, Kyüko Shoin, 1983), togedier with an annotated translation of the Aobo Tu (Illustrated boiling ofsea water) and a collated Chinese text with illustrations. In addition it provides a glossary of Chinese and Japanese characters and information about the weights and measures used at various periods in Chinese history. ^ ,„„,. . TT . The Aobo Tu is probably the earliest extant work from any culture that deals© 1995 by Universityr ' ofHawai'i Pressspecifically and exclusively with salt production techniques. It is more than two hundred and fifty years older tiian Johann Thölde's comparable Haligraphia, first published in Germany in 1603. It was compiled by Chen Chun ofdie Yuan, and 284 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 1995 it contains information about the salt production techniques ofdie Xiasha saline ofHuating county under the jurisdiction ofLiangzhe xilu (present day Songjiang, under the jurisdiction ofShanghai). It was completed in die Yuantong period (1333-1335), when Chen Chun was in the Salt Commission (yansi) of the Xiasha saline (chang), and was compiled on the basis of forty-seven illustrations by a former saline controller. Each illustration ofdie Aobo Tu is accompanied by an explanatory text and a poem. It is clear from a passage in the preface to the Aobo Tu, from details of die illustrations, and brief allusions in the text, that this work was compiled not only to assist officials with reorganization of the salines, but also with regard to trying to improve the living conditions of the salt producers. Yoshida Tora gives a very interesting discussion of salt production techniques in the Song and Yuan periods diat provides a context within which to locate the particular saline, Liangzhe, depicted in the Aobo Tu. Moreover, he supplies additional background materials related to die text, its history, statistics for salt production quotas during the Soutìiern Song, and a briefdescription of conditions of salt production early in this century. The last of these reveals that the only significant change in the production techniques used in Liangzhe was to use sun and wind to evaporate the brine instead ofboiling. The translation ofthe Aobo Tu is supplied by Vogel, who also annotated and punctuated die Chinese text. The text supplied is a photolitiiographic reproduction of the Siku quanshu editions, with punctuation and collation widi the Jishi'an congshu and the Harvard edition carried out direcdy onto the photolithographic copy. The illustrations from the Siku quanshu editions each depict die salt production process in a simple and almost diagrammatic manner, but at...