Ancient tea route
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ancient Tea Route (simplified Chinese: 茶马古道; traditional Chinese: 茶馬古道) was a network of mule caravan paths winding through the mountains of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. It is also referred to as the Southern Silk Road and Tea and Horse Road. From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan, one of the first tea-producing regions: to India via Burma; to Tibet; and to central China via Sichuan Province.[1][2][3][4][5] In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt. People and horses carried heavy loads.
It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea (typically tea bricks) first spread across China and Asia from its origins in Pu'er county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.[6]
The route earned the name Tea-Horse Road because of the common trade of Tibetan ponies for Chinese tea, a practice dating back at least to the Song dynasty, when the sturdy horses were important for China to fight warring nomads in the north.[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Freeman, Michael ; Ahmed, Selena (2011). Tea Horse Road - China’s Ancient Trade Road to Tibet. Bangkok: River Books Co, Ltd. pp. 332 pages.. ISBN 978-9-749863-95-0.
[edit] External links
- China’s ‘Ancient Tea-Horse Road’ in Historical Perspective, Andrew Forbes and David Henley.
- Silk Road Foundation - An authoritative article about the ancient tea route by Yang Fuquan, director of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.
- Documentary: Insight on Asia - Asian Corridor in Heaven - Made by KBS. TV Program.
- Tea Horse Road - National Geographic Magazine
- "The Tea Horse Road", Jeff Fuchs, The Silk Road, Vol.6, No.1 (Winter 2008).
- Interview: Jeff Fuchs, Kokunming, August 11, 2010.
- Bob Rogers and Claire Rogers, "Traveling Today's Tea Horse Road", Desert Leaf magazine, February 2011.
