China’s Ambassador to India Xu Feihong on Sunday posted on X in regards to the historic Tea Horse Street which spanned greater than 2,000 km, and linked China to India through Tibet. “The Historic Tea-Horse Street witnesses the exchanges and interplay between China and India all through the lengthy river of historical past,” he wrote.
Though not as well-known because the Silk Street, which linked China and Europe, the Tea Horse Street was a vital business pathway for hundreds of years.
“Tea from throughout China was transported to Xizang [Tibet], then shipped to Kolkata through the Himalayan passes, and offered in Europe and Asia on a large scale,” the Ambassador wrote.
A community of roads
The Tea Horse Street doesn’t seek advice from a single highway however a community of branching paths that started in southwest China and ended within the Indian subcontinent.
The 2 essential pathways handed by means of cities like Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province, reached Lhasa in Tibet, earlier than coming into the Indian subcontinent the place they branched into present-day India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. These routes had been perilous to journey on, handed by means of tough terrain, and reached an elevation of as much as 10,000 toes.
The origin of the Tea Horse Street could be traced to the rule of the Tang dynasty in China (618-907 CE). The writings of Buddhist monk Yijing (635-713 CE) — who gave among the most detailed descriptions of Nalanda college obtainable at this time — point out merchandise like sugar, textiles, and rice noodles being transported from southwestern China to Tibet and India whereas horses, leather-based, Tibetan gold, saffron and different drugs herbs went to China. (Shaochen Wang, ‘The Safety, Designation and Administration of Cultural Routes: A Case Examine of the Tea & Horse Street in China’, 2021).
Over time, the commerce centered on teas and horses, as official paperwork from the Tune dynasty (960-1279 CE) present.
Tea and horses
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The primary driver for that is believed to be the demand for tea amongst Tibetan nomads, dwelling in chilly and unforgiving situations. As an article within the Nationwide Geographic put it, “[Tea] was a sizzling beverage in a chilly local weather… A cup of yak butter tea — with its distinctive salty, barely oily, sharp style — supplied a mini-meal for herders warming themselves over yak dung fires in a windswept hinterland.”
On the similar time, horses had been a significant navy useful resource in addition to a method for transportation. However the central plains of China didn’t produce horses, which means that they needed to be imported from neighbouring Tibet and Yunnan.
“The geographical options of the business items tea and horse, on this case, promoted the complementary trade actions and shaped the tea and horse trade market,” Shaochen Wang wrote.
The truth is, by the tenth century, official amenities had been established alongside the border counties in China to manage and supervise the commerce commerce. With the rise and fall of kingdoms, commerce ebbed and flowed over the following few centuries.
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As an illustration, tea was pressed collectively and packed into “bricks” — a type of packing that is still widespread until date, and was akin to foreign money in medieval Tibet, students say. In the meantime, sturdy Tibetan steeds turned central to China’s fights towards nomadic tribes from Mongolia, the predecessors of the mighty Genghis Khan.
In fashionable instances
In 1912, because the time of the Qing dynasty got here to an finish, the Horse Tea Street would proceed to stay vital. Home “turmoil and international aggressions” supplied a “distinctive alternative for the buying and selling programs in southwest China”, Shaochen Wang wrote.
By means of the highway, new strategies and items had been delivered to the less-developed mountainous areas of Yunnan. Moreover, with China now being in higher contact with the world market, Yunnan’s tea business quickly expanded.
Later, throughout World Warfare II, the highway performed a major position in transporting provides to the frontline battlefield in China, with Japan controlling nearly the entire Chinese language shoreline and airspace.
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With the institution of the Individuals’s Republic in 1949, the Tea Horse Street witnessed gradual decline. Most notably, porters who would carry a great deal of as much as 150 kg largely stopped the backbreaking work following Mao Zedong’s land reforms.
Of late, China has promoted tourism alongside the historic path. Lijiang turned a UNESCO World Heritage Web site in 1997. The UNESCO web site says, “From the twelfth century onward, the Outdated City of Lijiang was an essential items distribution heart for commerce between Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet, and is the place the Silk Street within the south joins the Historic Chama (Tea and Horse) Roads.”
