Chonquing

Hi, my name is Tong wong, and I live in the ancient tang dynasty, in Lijiang. It’s 700 a.d., and I am traveling along the Yangtze river from Lijiang to Chongqing. I start my journey at my home village, right on the river. The river helps us continue our lifes. It literally keeps our villages people living, since it supplies water and food. Nowadays, music and dancing is very popular. As I row away at the start of my journey, I can hear the distant sound of music from my home, even as I’m hundreds of feet away. My family loves music, and my sister has even been starting scroll painting. That is also very popular now as well. Art and literature are also very much encouraged in this time period. I have even started to learn to play the bells, a very popular instrument right now. As I flow upstream, I see a village ahead. This village was different though. People were salt mining in their village. Salt mining is a very dangerous thing to do, and most of the time it was done by slaves or prison labor. I could see it was salt mining because many workers were getting salt from the ground. Watching them, I felt bad for them. Salt mining is a very tretourus job. I decided to ask one of the miners if they liked salt mining. I asked man that looked older than the rest. He responded that “it is very hard, but we are known for how well we do it!”. I think that’s amazing.