Ancient_tea_route

The Ancient Tea Route (Chinese: 茶马古道) was a network of mule caravan paths winding through the mountains of Yunnan Province in Southwest China. It is also referred to as the Southern Silk Road. From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan, one of the first tea-producing regions: to India via Burma; to Tibet; and to central China via Sichuan Province.

In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt.

It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea (typically tea bricks) spread across China and Asia from its origins in Pu\'er county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.

See also

• Pu-erh tea
• Silk Road
• Tea Road

External links

• Silk Road Foundation - An authoritative article about the ancient tea route by Yang Fuquan, director of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
• Documentary: Insite on Asia - Asian Corridor in Heaven - Made by KBS tv Program

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia