1 · POSITION
The Tea Horse Road was a network of caravan paths through the mountains of southwest China, along which tea went to Tibet and Tibetan horses came back. The register enters it as a road whose market towns became the lodging places of the caravans, and because a modern lodge circuit in Yunnan and Tibet — Songtsam, in the register — was built along it a thousand years later. [1, 2]
2 · TEA FOR HORSES
Tea was already bartered beyond the Dadu River under the Western Han. Under the Tang, tea reached Tibet through royal marriages, first as a medicine. War made the exchange official: the Song needed sturdy horses against the northern nomads, and the trade of tea for horses became government policy. The Ming regulated the tea’s production, price and quality; in 1702 the Qing set up the Tea Pass at Kangding to gather and distribute it. [1, 2]
3 · THE ROUTES
From Yunnan, tea left Yiwu and Pu’er and reached Lhasa by way of Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La; some went on to India and Nepal. From Sichuan, the road ran from Ya’an through Kangding to Lhasa, more than a thousand kilometres. Porters on the Sichuan road carried sixty to ninety kilograms of tea, often more than their own weight, resting the load on a metal-tipped staff without setting it down. [1]
4 · THE MARKET TOWNS
Lijiang was the largest market town on the eastern route, Kangding the richest tea-and-horse market under the Ming and Qing, and Shaxi survives as a well-preserved trading town. After 1957 the Yunnan–Tibet motor roads took the freight, and the caravan trade of men and horses came to an end. [1, 2]
5 · ⚑ CANDOUR
⚑ The road’s beginning is placed in the Western Han by one source and the Yunnan–Tibet branch in the late sixth century by another; both stand. The source that claims to carry the story to the Second World War does not discuss the war. Songtsam’s route along the road is the register’s link and is described in its own entry. [1–2]
Sources & Further Reading
Sources checked 22 October 2026.