atChaka Salt Lake close the town Chaka inward Wulan county is i of the most beautiful lakes of the Qaidam Basin inward Northwest China’s Qinghai province. Chaka is genuinely a large common salt apartment , well-nigh nine km long together with xv km broad , covered amongst a thick crust of salt. During the dry out seasons , the lake remains much smaller inward size. Only when it rains , the lake extends to its sum size.
The lake is real shallow —at places , it is exclusively ankle-deep— that allows visitors to walk over the lake. At times , when the heaven is looking bright , the crystal bluish H2O of the lake reflects the azure heaven every bit if a giant mirror is resting on the ground. This has earned Chaka Salt Lake the nickname of ‘Mirror of the Sky’. In this reckon , Chaka Salt Lake is similar the smaller cousin of Bolivia’s famous Salar de Uyuni.
The portion where the lake is located was in i trial a shallow sea. Tectonic drive together with thus raised this block of solid soil to a greater extent than than iii ,000 meters upwards to flat the huge Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Small pockets of residue seawater inward this plateau turned into saline lakes , i of which is Chaka Salt Lake. More common salt from the mountains flowed inward along amongst rainwater together with seasonal rivers , together with over fourth dimension the salinity of the lakes increased. There is straightaway over v meters of common salt inward Chaka Salt Lake.
The common salt lakes of the Qaidam Basin has been mined for to a greater extent than than iii ,000 years. During the times of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC—AD 25) , the local people of Qiang ethnic minority depended on the lakes for salt. Salt likewise came from other places such every bit Xian Lake , which is straightaway called Qinghai Lake , together with Salt Lake inward Jincheng County.
Large scale exploitation of common salt began inward the minute one-half of the 18th century. Due to the large reserves , mining is non at all hard every bit natural salts tin post away live on obtained past times only regain the hap layer of the lake. Large scale mining is done mechanically demo allowing Chaka’s common salt mill to annually arrive at hundreds of tons of high-quality unsmooth common salt that gets sold some PRC , together with are fifty-fifty exported to Nippon , Nepal , together with the Middle East.
Photo credit: randomix/Flickr
Photo credit: randomix/Flickr
A common salt sculpture close the lake.
Sources: Travel PRC Guide / Baidu