Southern Silk Road is An Important Corridor Connecting Tibet and Sichuan

This route would appear to have been in use long before it became an avenue for the tea and horse trade during the Tang and the Song dynasties, for it was a very important corridor connecting the ancient cultures of the areas of present Tibet, Yunnan and Sichuan. In such places as Ganzi and Aba distrcts of Sichuan and the Hengduan Mountains of Northwest Yunnan archaeologists have discovered many cist tombs which date from the Shang (ca. 1600-ca.1100 BCE) and the Zhou (ca. 1100-256 BCE) dynasties. These cist tombs are scattered broadly in the canyons and valleys of the upper reaches of the Min River as well as the Yalong and Jinsha Rivers. Most of these tombs are located in western Sichuan and western Yunnan, although a few have also been found in Tibet. Although there are slight differences between the cist tombs of the various sites, their main features and cultural characteristics are generally similar.

The Tibetan people had been in close communication with the Tang and the various ethnic groups of southwest China for a long time; so it is very likely that the tea of Sichuan and Yunnan had already reached Tibet. As early as the seventh century Tubo (Tibetan) military power had conquered the ethnic tribes scattered in the present areas of Lijiang and Dali, Yunnan, and had established a military administration in northwest Yunnan. The military route used by the Tibetans to reach Yunnan was closely related to the contemporary tea and horse route. Yunnan is the one of the places where tea plants are native. Since 1949 scientists have found many wild and cultivated tea trees that are more than a thousand years old in the Nannuo mountains and Bada Mountains of Menghai County as well as Yiwu Mountains and Xiangming Mountains of Mengla County, Xishuangbanna. The local people call these ancient tea trees the Tea Tree Kings.?In the Man shu , there is a description of the tea trees grown in southern Yunnan. It also states that the local tribal people of Nanzhao Kingdom (7th-9th centuries CE) had the custom of drinking the local tea (Fan Chuo 1961, 1992).