Tea Talk Tuesday - Ancient Tea and Horse Trail

Good Morning and welcome to another beautiful fall day in Seattle.
The ancient tea and horse caravan routes date to around 700 CE under the Tang Dynasty.
The trade consisted mainly of tea from Sichuan and Yunnan and horses from Central Asia. The Tibetan diet, mainly meat, needed tea as a source of C and other vitamins and as a digestive aid, while Imperial armies found Asian horses indispensable. Until trade in horses stopped in the mid 1700's, China's government intermittently regulated trans-border trade in tea and horses. At one point under the Ming Dynasty, a high-quality horse could bring 120 pounds of tea. The trail "starts" at the market town Pu-Erh and has two main branches, one to the Sichuan province and on to Mongolia and the other through Yunnan to Tibet. There are endless offshoots, some leading as far as Myanmar, Nepal and India.

Remind me to talk about Norwood Pratt some Friday! This is another of his selections from the Tea Dictionary, published by Tea Society Press in San Francisco, Calif. Printed in India 2010.
Thanks again Norwood! See you all Friday.

Julee