【Guess the Scenic Spot in Haichuan】Pioneered modern chemical industry; the chemical park was named after him

However, before 1915, the Chinese were not able to produce refined salt with a sodium chloride content of over 85%. At that time, developed countries in the West had clearly stipulated that salts with a sodium chloride content of less than 85% could not be used as feed ； In many parts of China, salt with a sodium chloride content of less than 50% is still used for human consumption. Although the Chinese possess abundant marine resources, the salt they use for consumption is still crude salt produced by traditional methods – it is inefficient to produce, has low purity, and contains many harmful substances. As a result, some Westerners mock China as a nation that eats soil. In fact, producing refined salt is not difficult and the cost is not high; it’s just that China lacked chemical engineers at that time, so no one got involved in it. The refined salt market has long been monopolized by British and Japanese companies. A young man from Hunan changed this situation. His name was Fan Xudong; he is regarded as the father of modern salt production in China, as well as the father of modern chemical industry. We should not forget Fan Xudong when it comes to salt. Fan Xudong (1883–1945) was born in 1883 in Xiangyin County, Hunan; his father was a private school teacher. Fan Xudong lost his father at the age of six and moved to Changsha to live with his mother, Lady Xie, and his elder brother, Fan Yuanlian. After the failure of the Wuxu Reform, Fan Yuanlian, who was part of the reformists, was placed on the run by the Qing dynasty, and Fan Xudong was forced to flee, eventually going to Japan. Between 1900 and 1910, Fan Xudong studied at Okayama Sixth High School and the Department of Chemistry at Kyoto Imperial University in Japan. He graduated from the imperial university in 1910 and remained there as an assistant instructor. In the same year, he married Xu Fu, a fellow native from Hunan who was studying in Tokyo. He returned to the country in 1911 and worked at the Beijing Mint in Beiyang, where he was responsible for testing and analysis. However, due to his dissatisfaction with the official practices at that time, he resigned from his job after two months. Soon after, he was sent to Western Europe to study the salt and alkali production industries in countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium, and reaped great benefits from it. In 1914, Fan Xudong came to Tanggu in Tianjin alone. It was a desolate and barren area, but it was covered with salt-alkali soil that stretched as far as the eye could see, looking like ice and snow, utterly crystalline. Fan Xudong said later, “A chemist who sees such abundant resources yet fails to develop the ambition to advance his country’s chemical industry is truly lacking in ambition.” ”

In 1915, Fan Xudong founded Jiuda Fine Salt Company in Tianjin, with a capital of 50,000 yuan. He began developing refined salt in a fishing village in Tanggu, and soon managed to achieve a purity level of over 90%. Jiuda used the beaches for salt evaporation, and steel pans were employed to heat the brine and facilitate crystallization, thus producing the first batch of refined salt manufactured in China. This salt was of high quality, uniform in texture, and hygienic; its main varieties included granular salt, powdered salt, and brick-shaped salt. The coarse salt produced by traditional salt-making methods couldn’t compare to it at all. Fan Xudong personally designed a pentagonal logo named “Neptune”. The image above shows workers at the Jiuda Salt Factory in Tanggu, Tianjin, as photographed in 1920. The Kudaka Salt Factory provides high-purity table salt for the public, as well as job opportunities for the local residents. During the War of Resistance against Japan, the Jiuda Salt Factory was moved to Sichuan. Photo provided by Sichuan Jiuda Salt Industry Company. Jiuda refined salt soon found itself under attack from salt merchants both at home and abroad. Japanese merchants spread rumors in the newspapers claiming that “Neptune” salt was toxic, while the British minister in China even attempted to block Tianjin Port with warships in order to prevent salt ships from leaving. Domestic salt merchants also joined in the attack. For hundreds of years, the production and distribution of salt across the country have been under a monopoly held by a partnership between officials and merchants. The major salt traders in the Jianghuai region controlled the prices of salt; they formed a large and complex interest group, and neither foreign powers nor China dared to consider implementing reforms. Fan Xudong’s arrival will clearly reverse the current situation. For a long time, Kudai refined salt could not be sold south of the Yangtze River; Fan Xudong was even **kidnapped**, and it was only through his brother’s efforts to intercede that he was released. In 1917, Kyuda Shio sold 10,000 dan of salt; this figure rose to over 40,000 dan in 1923, and reached its peak in 1936 at around 500,000 dan. Not only in the modern salt industry, but also in China’s modern alkali industry, everything began with Fan Xudong. Hou Debang, the inventor of the well-known \"Hou’s alkali production method,\" was actually an expert and key partner in Fan Xudong’s company. Fan Xudong’s team is almost entirely composed of technical professionals. Inspired by Fan Xudong’s full dedication to the development of the nation’s cause, these technical experts came together and worked together in a very smooth and harmonious manner. The picture shows a group photo of the employees of the “Permanent Yellow” group; in the front row, the fifth person from the right is Fan Xudong, and the fourth person from the right is Hou Debang, the chief engineer and renowned scientist. At that time, the most common attire among the people was coarse cloth robes, which were monotonous in color and not durable. Printed and dyed fabrics are a luxury item, as printing and dyeing require alkali, which is very expensive. In the alkali industry, the \"Solvay process\" which uses sodium chloride and limestone as raw materials is the most advanced technology; the West has established a patent monopoly on this area and refuses to disclose it to others. At that time, the British company Bourns held a monopoly on the soda ash market in China. When Fan Xudong began producing soda ash, he formed his own \"startup team\" – a group of young scientists who shared his ambitions. Among them were Chen Tiaofu, a master’s degree holder in chemistry from Soochow Dongwu University; Wang Xiaoxu, the manager and chief engineer at Shanghai Daxiao Machinery Factory; Li Zhuchen, a graduate in electrochemistry from Tokyo Higher Industrial School; and Hou Debang, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia University in the United States. This was the first true team of scientists in the history of Chinese enterprises. Li Zhuchen later became the Minister of the Food Industry in the Republic, while Hou Debang became famous worldwide for his innovative \"Hou process\" for producing soda ash and later served as the Vice Minister of the Chemical Industry in the Republic.

No, another city where he has worked

I don’t know; I’m not familiar with the chlor-alkali industry