Tea-horse ancient road refers to the folk international trade passage with caravan as the main means of transportation in the southwest of China, and it is a corridor for ethnic economic and cultural exchanges in the southwest of China. The ancient tea-horse road is an ancient commercial road in Yunnan, Tibet and western Yunnan. The ancient road began in the Tang and Song Dynasties and flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is named because its main function is to transport tea for caravan camels.
The ancient tea-horse road originated from the "tea-horse exchange" in the Tang and Song Dynasties.
Because Qinghai-Tibet is a frigid region with an altitude of three or four kilometers, Ciba, milk, ghee, beef and mutton are the staple foods of Tibetans. In the alpine region, you need to eat high-calorie fat, but there are no vegetables, it is hot and dry. Excessive fat is not easy to decompose in the human body, and tea can not only decompose fat, but also prevent dryness and heat. Therefore, Tibetans have created the plateau lifestyle habit of drinking butter tea in their long-term lives, but tea is not produced in Tibetan areas.
In the mainland, both civil servants and military campaigns need a large number of mules and horses, but the supply is in short supply, while Tibetan areas and the border areas of Sichuan and Yunnan produce good horses. As a result, tea-horse complementary trade, that is, "tea-horse mutual market" came into being.
There is not only an ancient tea-horse road in history, but also a huge transportation network. It is a road system with Sichuan-Tibet Road, Yunnan-Tibet Road and Qinghai-Tibet Road (Gan Qing Road) as the main trunk, supplemented by several branch lines and attached lines. It spans Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Tibet, and extends outward to South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and as far as Europe. Among the three avenues, Sichuan-Tibet Road was opened the earliest, with the largest traffic volume and great historical role.