Tea Horse Road
The mountain caravan path of Yunnan and Sichuan that exchanged Chinese tea bricks for Tibetan horses for over a thousand years.
Overview
From the Tang dynasty onward, compressed Pu'er and Ya'an tea traveled by mule caravan from Yunnan and Sichuan across the Hengduan mountains to Lhasa, returning with war horses China could not breed. The Song dynasty ran state tea and horse offices that managed the exchange rate, and the route sustained towns like Dali, Lijiang and Kangding. Journeys took months over passes above 3,000 meters. When Japan cut road supply lines in the 1940s, the caravans briefly revived as a lifeline. Modern highways ended commercial caravanning by the 1960s, and the route now survives as heritage tourism and the origin story of Pu'er tea.
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