Main lines
Sichuan–Tibet & Yunnan–Tibet
The Tea Horse Road linked Sichuan, Yunnan and ...
The Tea Horse Road linked Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet and reached toward South Asia — the classic passage of highland trade, ethnic exchange and the tea-horse market. Two main lines stand out: the Sichuan–Tibet line from Ya'an over Erlang Mountain and the Dadu River to Kangding and Chamdo; the Yunnan–Tibet line from Xishuangbanna and Pu'er via Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La into Tibet — all of it walking the Hengduan ranges and the plateau at elevations of several thousand meters, 'the highest corridor of civilization on earth.' Tea from the lowlands traded for horses and salt from the highlands; muleteers and porters walked it for a thousand years past dozens of multi-ethnic towns — the most living geographic proof of exchange among peoples.
The tea-horse market began in the Tang and flourished under the Song — the dynasty lacked warhorses, the plateau lacked vegetables and the tea that cuts grease from a butter-and-meat diet, so 'tea for horses' became state strategy: Tea-and-Horse Offices monopolized the trade down to every catty of tea. One first-class warhorse cost one hundred and twenty catties of tea; horse policy was military policy.
The trade was a living textbook of complementarity: the lowlands gave tea, cloth and iron; the plateau gave horses, salt and herbs; Yunnan gave Pu'er. No side was self-sufficient, so trade was not a choice but a necessity — comparative advantage, practiced by muleteers for a thousand years.
The road's perils defy imagination: the Yunnan line crossed the Meili snow range and crossed the Lancang on rope-ferries; on the Sichuan line even mules failed, and the 'porters' carried tea on their backs — a pack of sixteen catties, ten or more packs to a man, two thousand kilometers on foot, resting on T-shaped staffs whose tips wore ranks of deep pits into the rock.
The muleteer caravans were the road's soul: a caravan chief, laden mules, copper bells, camp in the open, watch for bandits and beasts. Lijiang to Lhasa took three months, and many never returned. The mani stone piles, temples and inns along the way made it a road of faith as well as freight — prayers carved into stone, lives entrusted to the mountain.
The road passed through the homelands of Tibetan, Han, Yi, Naxi, Bai and Dai communities: Lijiang's old town rose with Naxi merchant houses; Kangding's guozhuang lodges fed and brokered for passing caravans; Shaxi's Sideng Street is 'the only surviving market town of the Tea Horse Road.'
Its legacy runs beyond trade: butter tea in Tibet, hotpot in Sichuan, Pu'er's world fame in Yunnan — a taste-map drawn by the tea road. Today's Yunnan–Tibet and Sichuan–Tibet highways and trekking routes tread the very hoofprints of the caravans — an old road that wrote the exchange of southwestern peoples into the mountains themselves.