Out of the Mist: The Old Tea Horse Road

The Chinese camellia (Camellia sinensis), better known simply as tea, is a plant whose leaves and young buds yield the most consumed beverage in the world. Its cultivation and trade were an economic and political catalyst in eastern Eurasia for centuries, while its use gave comfort to generations of weary pilgrims, doleful poets and anxious carpet dealers.

Popular legends about idle emperors and romantic princesses loafing under camellia trees aside — I have tried steeping fresh leaves; it does not work — tea use probably began before 1000 BC, though exact dating is uncertain. Initially cultivated in south-west China, in what are today the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, as the presence of wild C. sinensis populations there demonstrates, tea was first used for ceremonial and later for medicinal purposes. As an everyday beverage, tea drinking spread only after the collapse of the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), becoming an important commercial product during the Song (960–1279).

Given its unique chemical profile, the fresh leaves of the camellia can be modified through a fairly simple manipulation, usually involving steaming, oxidation and a final toasting. Oxidation gives rise to certain compounds — mostly phenolics such as catechins, theaflavins and flavonoids — which give the different teas a wide yet distinct range of flavours and aromas. From white and green teas, through the various wulongs, to your favourite brand of Darjeeling or Assam, the entire selection comes from the same humble plant.

A princess, or a structural fact

As far as the Tibetan plateau is concerned, the arrival of the divine beverage probably ended the Tibetan habit of drinking yak butter dissolved in hot water, and brought the joyful blessing of consuming dissolved yak butter flavoured with tea.

Tradition attributes the introduction to a Tang dynasty princess named Wencheng, who brought it with her to Lhasa following her forced marriage to Songtsen Gampo, founder of the formidable Tibetan empire.

Songtsen (r. 605–649) spent the first years of his reign in the fierce unification of the Tibetan plateau, eventually turning on China itself, which typically responded by sending gifts, including one imperial niece. Her dowry is said to have included a few bundles of tea, happily adopted by the Tibetan elite ever after.

Imperial expansion continued under Songtsen's successors, pushing the borders at China's expense all the way to the Hexi corridor and the Tarim basin, and well into Central Asia, where a governor was even appointed in Kabul. For two centuries the Tibetans struggled for regional dominance, competing with both the Tang of China and the Abbasid caliphate — a struggle that lasted until the ninth-century disintegration of central Tibetan power.

The seventh century saw a considerable increase in trade between China and Tibet. In accordance with the common pattern, China supplied its neighbour with textiles, luxury items and ever-increasing quantities of tea, which became a staple of the local diet. In return Tibet supplied the Tang court with the one thing China never managed to produce in sufficient quantity or quality: horses.

From the dawn of Chinese civilisation, this extravagantly rich and fertile sedentary culture suffered a relative inferiority before foreign invaders. Its sheer size and immense population usually kept it safe from permanent occupation — although historically around half a dozen Chinese dynasties were in fact foreign — but placed China on an ongoing payroll intended to pacify its borders, usually with limited success. China's weakness on the battlefield was primarily an inability to master the equestrian arts that gave its nomadic foes such an advantage, above all mounted archery.

China's attempts to adapt its army to the age of bow and saddle ran into a major difficulty, since Chinese soil lacks selenium, which is crucial to healthy horse breeding. That again forced her to trade with her external enemies in order to acquire the indispensable mounts. Tibetan horses are not a prime catch, especially compared with the legendary horses of Nisa or Fergana, or even the small but tough Mongol horses; but drastic times take drastic measures, and China made an effort to buy war horses wherever she could. From the seventh century onwards Tibet exported an increasing number of horses to China, and in return received tea — loads of it.

Routes and bureaux

During the Tang heyday the main trade ran along a northern route, the so-called old Tang trade road (Tangfan gudao, 唐蕃古道), starting in the historical region of Guanzhong, today's Shaanxi, then winding through Gansu and Qinghai, passing the Jinsha river in north-eastern Sichuan before ascending to the Tibetan lands of Qamdo and Nagqu and ending in Lhasa.

During the Five Dynasties and early Song periods there was a steady increase in demand for both Chinese tea in Tibet and horses on the Chinese side. Testimony to that trend comes from an eleventh-century official, who stated that “the Westerners have begun to bring good horses to the frontier. All they desire is tea.” In order to tax and regulate the exchange between the two cultures, the Song administration established an official office known as the tea-horse bureau (Chamasi, 茶马司).

It was in this period that the route we know today took shape. One branch starts in southern Yunnan, in the tea-producing regions of Xishuangbanna and Pu'er, before heading north through Lijiang, Zhongdian (today's Shangri-La) and Litang. In the Tibetan town of Litang the road was joined by the northern route, which began at Ya'an, another important tea-growing region and a major commercial hub. From Litang the road pressed on up the Hengduan mountains and across the vast Tibetan plateau, all the way to Lhasa and further to Nepal and India.

This description is of course an oversimplification. Like the better-known Silk Road to the north, the Tea-Horse Road (Cha ma dao, 茶马道) is a late twentieth-century conceptualisation of a fluid network of steep routes and mist-covered paths. Like other coined terms — the Musk Road from Tibet to Central Asia, the European Amber Road, even the maritime Silk Road along the Indian Ocean shores — these are later definitions of long-lasting systems of cross-cultural exchange, ever changing according to political, economic and ecological conditions.

Why the tea was pressed

Tea is a relatively sensitive product; as organic material it suffers from poor storage, extreme changes of weather, and packaging in tea bags.

The tea commonly exported to Tibet was usually produced from a subspecies of the Chinese camellia known as big-leaved tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica), which still grows in its natural form on the mist-covered slopes of Yunnan and north-eastern India.

The processing of the exported tea followed from the need to transport it in bulk along mountainous routes, sometimes over passes of five thousand metres and more. To ensure its safe arrival the tea was dried and pressed into moulds of various shapes, then wrapped and packed before being dispatched up the mountain trails.

This compact tea is known in China today as Pu'er tea (普洱茶) and classified into two categories: sheng (生茶), meaning live or raw, and shu (熟茶), meaning ripe or cooked.

Originally all pressed tea belonged to the sheng category — green or lightly oxidised tea which, under the influence of time and climate, underwent further oxidation and aged slowly, taking on a much darker colour, deeper tones and aromas, and a heavier, somewhat sweetish flavour.

In normal terms it is recommended to drink tea within two or three years of production. Sheng Pu'er is the only tea that improves with age, reaching its prime at ten years or more, provided it is stored properly.

Growing demand for Pu'er led, in 1973, to the invention of a bacterial process that produced a somewhat similar result in considerably less time; the resulting shu Pu'er comes fairly close to genuinely aged sheng. It is worth mentioning that a few years ago China experienced a “Pu'er bubble”, when analysts speculated on a dramatic rise in the value of the sheng Pu'er market, resulting in frenzied investment in Pu'er “cakes” in the hope of future profit. Those speculations appear to have been highly exaggerated, and the trend has since died off.

Jashi

没有翻不过的山，没有不能征服的路

“There is no unclimbable mountain, nor path that cannot be conquered.” — a Tea-Horse Road proverb

I met Jashi by the concrete-clad banks of the Jin river in Chengdu, Sichuan. After a few paper cups of sugarcane juice and a few more pots of tea in a local Western-style coffee shop with him and his wife Chen, I was thrilled to learn that Jashi was no stranger to the mountain paths of Yunnan, and that despite commercial decline over the last few generations the network was fragmented but otherwise fairly active until recent years, giving highland communities access to basic commodities such as salt, spices, medicine and, of course, tea.

A few days later we sat in a flowering apple grove, where Jashi was kind enough to answer my questions.

By Jashi's own definition, the Tea-Horse Road is a commercial, cultural and communication network, economically based on tea and other products and on horses or mules as its means of transport, although footed porters were common in the past. This rough highland network connects different ethnic groups and communities along the fringes of the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayas, all united and dependent on one another in order to obtain everyday essentials. Tea has been a crucial part of the Tibetan diet for at least a thousand years, used to warm the long cold winters as well as a digestive alongside a grain- and meat-based diet.

Jashi joined the route in his youth. Like many before him he was pushed to join the caravans linking the remote towns and villages along the fringes of the great plateau by the need to make a living, but also by a desire to harden his character and develop manly skills.

According to Jashi, such a caravan was organised either by local business owners who commissioned a party to deliver needed commodities, or, more often, assembled by individuals seeking profit from trade.

Such an individual, a route leader oddly nicknamed ma guo tou (horse-pot-head), had to prove himself capable of recruiting the right men and a sufficient number of pack animals; a party might include around fifty men and twice as many animals. En route the leader's part was to manage the daily routine, find suitable paths and camping grounds, and get the upper hand over any unexpected incident along the trail.

One such incident, which also shows the particular relationship between the men of the tea road and their horses, occurred when a pack horse named Dzero (“grassland eagle”) slipped and fell off a cliff to the river below, and died.

Without hesitation a party descended along the cliffside by a perilous path in order to find the horse's body. When the corpse was found, the men built a wooden platform. Adorned with wild flowers, the deceased comrade was laid on the platform while prayers and mourning songs were chanted in his honour.

“Oh my comrade, / you will always remain with me on the route, / but you leave me here, and go to heaven, / while I endure the hardships of life.”

Jashi says that on hearing this, tears ran down the dead horse's eyes.

He explains that horse and man share an intimate bond, a real companionship and mutual dependency; a horse and his owner genuinely understand each other, and just like humans, horses have emotions and can smile and cry.

After the railway

Despite the historical decline of the Tea-Horse Road, commercial traffic on the ancient routes connecting Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet and Nepal lasted at least until 2006 and the opening of the new Lhasa railway. In that year the Chinese government decided unilaterally that there was no further need for this outdated means of transport and initiated a last trade party to commemorate the history — and the end — of the tea-horse road. Financed partly by the government and partly by local tea-shop owners, the profits were used to build seventeen schools in villages along the road. Despite the official abolition of the route, some regions are naturally too remote to use the newly built Chinese transport networks, and cars, motorbikes and even horses are still used to connect them.

Since the early 1990s there has been growing interest in the old tea-horse road. Through the combined effort of scholars, local businessmen and officials, the network is now more popular than ever, among domestic as well as international visitors. This has helped reshape Yunnan's image from a remote and marginalised part of China into a centre of ancient international trade and cultural exchange. The process offers many possibilities as well as considerable threats for local communities and the environment. The constant growth of visitor numbers — over five million overseas tourists in 2013 — may pose a real threat both to local communities, which risk becoming over-dependent on tourism, and to the region's natural resources and biodiversity. The coming years will decide whether this land of tea and mist preserves some of its unique historical, environmental and cultural heritage, or falls into over-development like so many other parts of China before it.

Only time will tell whether this land of clouds keeps some of its centuries-old charm, and its aromas of mountain mist, the lush grove and the tea leaf.