Brick tea carried from Sichuan Province to Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,
with both Chinese and Tibetan on it. The sort of tea is seldom
seen nowadays.
Tea Carried to Tibet
Yunnan is one of the cradles of the
¡°tea culture,¡± and Sichuan tea was much coveted by people
in the Central Plains. During the Tang Dynasty, Puer tea was
grown in areas flanking the Langcanjiang River. It tastes
bitter at first, but then sweet.
During the Song Dynasty 960-1279), people in
Yunnan and Sichuan exchanged their tea for horses from Tibet.
According to Tibetan classics, people of the
Tibetan ethnic group in western Sichuan and northwestern Yunnan
had access to famous tea from the Central Plains during the
Tang Dynasty. The effect of tea in promoting digestion and
clearing away greasiness resulting from having eaten too much
meat attracted many. Not only the nobility, but also the general
populace took delight in drinking it. Sipping tea became the
order of the day, then. The result was the flourishing of
the tea-horse trade.
Around the 1930s, merchants in Yunnan organized
caravans composed of several thousands of mules and horses
to transport tea in Xikang Province to Tibet, while merchants
in Sichuan hired cheap labor to carry tea on their shoulders
or backs to Kangding, capital of Xikang Province, where it
was taken on to Tibet on the backs of yaks.
Introduction
