Tea Horse Road

"[2] There are numerous surviving archaeological and monumental elements, including trails, bridges, way stations, market towns, palaces, staging posts, shrines and temples along the route.

It refers to a major traffic road formed by the exchange of tea and horses between Han and Tibet from the Tang and Song Dynasties to the Republic of China.

It started from Yiwu and Pu'er in Xishuangbanna, the main tea producing area of Yunnan, and entered Tibet through today's Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Lijiang City and Shangri-La, and went directly to Lhasa.

It starts from Ya'an, the tea producing area of Yazhou in the east, passes through Dajian Furnace (now Kangding), reaches Lhasa, Tibet in the west, and finally leads to Bhutan, Nepal and India.

[citation needed] From around a thousand years ago, the Tea Horse Road become a trade link from Yunnan to Tibet; and to Central China via Sichuan Province.

[9][10] The route earned the name because of the common trade of Tibetan ponies for Chinese tea, a practice dating back at least to the Song dynasty, when the sturdy horses were important for China to fight warring nomads in the north.

In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt and silk products from Chengdu, notably shujin (蜀锦; a type of Sichuan embroidery).

[16] There are 86 cultural heritage sites on the ancient tea horse route in Yunnan province, located in 21 counties and cities[18]。 The site of Guangen Bridge is located in Minjiang Village, Zhen Yuan County and Enle Old Street river bank, built in the early Qing dynasty, the bridge is 188 meters long, with stone piers and wooden frames, and more than 50 tiled houses on both sides.

[33] On March 5, 2013, the Tea Horse Ancient Road was announced by The State Council of the People's Republic of China as the seventh batch of national key cultural relic protection units.