The production and use of salt originated in China. The word salt originally meant boiling salt water in a container. It is recorded in Shuowen that raw food is called brine and cooked food is called salt. Legend has it that in the era of the Yellow Emperor, there was a warlord named Su Sha. He started to boil milk with sea water and then fried it into salt. Its colors are blue, yellow, white, black and purple. It is inferred that people in China began to cook salt during the period between Shennong (Yandi) and Huangdi, and the earliest salt in China was cooked with seawater. By the 1950s, salt frying utensils had been found in the cultural relics unearthed in Fujian, which proved that the ancients had learned to cook sea salt in Yangshao period (5000-3000 BC).

According to the above information and physical evidence, in China, the origin of salt occurred as early as 5,000 years ago in the Yanhuang era. The inventor Su Sha was the originator of cooking seawater salt with fire, and later generations respectfully called him "Salt Sect". Before the Song Dynasty, a temple dedicated to Yanzong was built ten miles southeast of Anyi County, Xiezhou, Hedong. During the Tongzhi period of Qing Dynasty, Qiao Songnian, a salt messenger, built a "salt temple" in Taizhou. Su Sha, who cooked the sea to get salt, Guan Zhong, who transported brine in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and Guan Zhong, who practiced "salt administration official camp" in Qi State in the Spring and Autumn Period, were placed in the position of accompanying sacrifices.

China is also the birthplace of salt wells. As early as the Warring States period, it existed in Bashu area (now Sichuan Province). During the Qin Dynasty, Li Bing was stationed in Shu County. While controlling water, he surveyed the distribution of underground brine and began to dig salt wells. "Huayang Guozhi Shuzhi" records: Li Bing "knows all the water veins in Guangdu Salt Well and all the ponds in Tongguang Salt Well, so Shu is full of health." This is the earliest record of digging salt wells in ancient China. Biography of King Shu: "During the Xuan Di Festival (69 BC-66 BC), dozens of salt wells were drilled." Since the Han Dynasty, salt ponds have also been used to extract salt. Wang Xun's Luo Du Fu: "There is a salt pond in the east, which is clean and fresh, natural and not hard to cook." Serina Liu's "Lu Du Fu": "There are salt ponds, which are fried in Yangchun and sprayed with fire. Salt self-sufficiency, no loss, no diligence. "