Ancient Tea Horse Roads

It’s a well known fact that tea has been consumed in China for centuries, but how did it become the most popular beverage in the world?

Many will have heard of the famous Silk Road, but the Ancient Tea Horse Roads were the routes that allowed the transportation of tea between Ancient China and West Asia.

There were several of these ancient routes but the two main ones stemmed from the two major tea production areas, Puerh in Yunnan and Ya’an in Sichuan and for thousands of years human feet and horses hoofs treaded these routes trading in tea and Tibetan horses.

Along these unpaved and rugged roads stretching for more than 4000km from the Yunnan - Guizhou plateau to the Qinghai - Tibet plateau, tea, salt and sugar were traded into Tibet and horses, cows, furs and other local products passed into China.These ancient commercial passages first appeared during the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907) and lasted until the 1960’s when the Tibetan highways were constructed. As well as trade routes these corridors were very important for the political, economic, social and cultural development of the very different ethnic groups that lived along the way.

Crucial to China for the export of tea, these routes also played a major role with the gifting of Imperial ‘tribute tea’ to emperors.  All Chinese tea was originally pressed into bricks, cakes or discs as the famous Puerh of the Yunnan is still produced today, and this is the form it always took as ‘tribute tea’, prior to the Sung dynasty. In order to preserve the tea and to make it easier to to transport along the Tea Horse Routes, the tea was processed by steaming and compressed into these cakes, known as Biing cha. These discs of tea were packed in stacks of seven, then wrapped in bamboo leaves for easy transportation by the horses. Seven is an important number in Chinese culture. It is the number of a perfectly completed cycle, as each phase of the moon lasts for seven days (the four phases of the moon form a complete cycle). This may be why so many ceremonies and festivals in China are celebrated on the seventh day.

This pressed Puerh tea was the most preferred tea of the nomadic tribes of the northern and central Asian areas as an aid to digestion. The Mongols who brought Yunnan into the Chinese Empire ate a lot of fatty meat and dairy products, as in fact they do today, and drank Puerh tea to eliminate grease from their diet. The tea growers of Yunnan sent their best grades of fully fermented aged Puerh tea cakes along these roads to the new northern capital of Beijing and this is also the type of tea that was shipped onward across Siberia alone the northern tea road to Russia.

‘Tribute tea’ and the ancient Tea Horse Roads were key to establishing the Chinese economy. Much of the ‘tribute tea’ sent to the emperors court were given away as gifts to favoured courtiers and visiting foreign diplomats who took them back along the tea horse roads to their own lands. This is saw Chinese tea become the most popular beverage creating a constant demand of imports from the only place that produced tea - China. Imperial ‘tribute tea’ and the routes was the way of spreading China’s most exquisite product to countries around the world.

Interestingly enough, the practice of offering the best tea as a tribute to the emperor continues today in Taiwan and China, except today the emperor wears a suit and tie and his courtiers use mobile phones and computers rather than calligraphy brushes and silk fans!

The Ancient Tea Horse routes  passed through sub -tropical forests, lakes, rivers and mountain peaks. Today, with the opening of the Sichuan-Tibetan highways in the 1960’s, the routes declined though some sections are still used for transport purposes. There can be no doubt that these ancient roads formed the basis for the economic success of China in the millennia and linked together all the ethnic groups living in areas near the roads making them members of the great Chinese nation today.