Shanxi Yuncheng Salt Lake Spa

Shanxi Yuncheng Salt Lake Spa draws chloride-rich mineral water from the geothermal resources of the Yuncheng basin near China's most ancient inland salt lake — the Yuncheng Salt Lake, which has produced salt for human consumption for over four thousand years and whose hypersaline pink and red waters colored by halophilic algae create one of China's most visually extraordinary industrial and natural landscapes. The extraordinary mineral richness of the Yuncheng area — where ancient brine has concentrated chlorides and trace minerals over millennia — gives the thermal waters an unusual mineral profile prized for skin therapy and circulatory health in the Chinese balneological tradition. Yuncheng is also home to the extraordinary Guanhe Wetland Reserve surrounding the salt lake and the proximity of the legendary Kuan Yu Temple (Guandi Miao) at Jiezhou — one of China's most magnificent ancient temple complexes dedicated to the deified general celebrated across all of Chinese culture — adding great cultural resonance to a mineral spa visit in this ancient Shanxi river valley.