Tea classroom
The Ancient Tea-Horse Road and Dali’s March Street Market
发布时间:2015/12/24 10:05:22信息来源:作者:浏览次数:
Since 1990, Chama Gudao (The Ancient Tea-Horse Road) has become a historical and cultural hot word, attracting more and more social attention, and the paths in Yunnan, Sichuan and other places in the southwest region, therefore, have also become popular among travelers. However, with the fast development of the construction of transportation and highways in the area starting from 1950s and 1960s, the Ancient Tea-Horse Road with horse caravan as the main body for transportation is no longer in use and has been replaced by modern transportation routes of highways, railways and airlines extended in all directions and fast and convenient means of communication such as cars, trains and planes. Along with the disappearance of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, many ancient paths, posts, caravansaries and other remains of the Road have also faded away in history.
Despite of the fact mentioned above, according to the personal research and study on the historical origins between Dali and the Ancient Tea-Horse Road in recent years, the author still have the feeling that not only Dali is an important city on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road but also the Dali’s March Street Market is well-conserved historical heritage of the ancient folklore formed along the existence of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road. This is due to Dali’s increasingly important status as the center of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road at the late Qing Dynasty and the early of the Republic of China.
The Tea-Horse Trade on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road was first started in the region of Pu’er. However, at the late Qing Dynasty and the early of the Republic of China, malaria, plague and other jungle fevers were common in southern Yunnan, and bandits also haunted the area; therefore, horse caravans from Tibet dared not to go into Pu’er without preparation, which caused the moving of the tea trade centre towards the west. As trade among horse caravans from Tibet, Sichuan and Yunnan increased in Xiaguan, the town was more and more important on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, and replaced Pu’er and became the biggest processing centre of compressed tea and collecting and distributing centre of tea in the southwest region.
In 1902, the creation and finalization of Tuocha laid the basis of the core status of Xiaguan in the distribution of Yunnan tea to Tibet. Each year, thousands of horse caravans from Simao (now called Pu’er) and Lincang delivered Maocha raw materials to Xiaguan. The raw materials were then processed into Tuocha and Manzhuancha (latter called heart-shaped tea) by tea firms such as Yongchangxiang, Fuhechun, Maoheng, Chengchang and Yuanchunmao, and then sold to Sichuan, Tibet and other places.
Since Xiaguan itself did not produce tea, all the raw materials used and products sold in Xiaguan had to be carried here by horse caravans. Due to this fact, each year in March (of the Chinese traditional calendar) when it was the time for selling spring tea in the market, horse caravans from the south routes carrying spring tea and horse caravans from the north routes carrying Tibetan medicine, fur, sundries and other local products all came to Dali to make transactions. Dali’s March Street Market therefore became a large-scale goods exchange fair on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road.
Dali’s March Street Market is a goods exchange fair from 15 to 20 of March (of the Chinese traditional calendar) every year, among people around Dali, that has been carried on for a thousand of years. At the beginning, it was an activity wearing a religious color, and then gradually became a grand goods exchange fair that was influential in Yunnan and the southwest of China. It was the most representative event among the folklores and festivals in Dali. The spectacular event of the March Street Market was recorded in Xu Xiake’s Travels like this: ‘merchants gather here and set up booths one next to the other and form the market. This is a market full of horses, men and women, and bustling with activities and goods. Goods from 13 provinces are all sold here’.
Time flies and many years have passed. In the past a thousand years, the March Street Market played an enormously important role in exchange of goods and materials among ethnic groups in the border region. At present, although people already live a rich and wealth material life and the March Street Market is more like a folklore event and joyful festival that present and provide opportunity for people to experience the unique ethnic life style of Bai people in Dali, transactions of livestock (mules and horses), tea, herbs and sundries are still the largest and most influential traditional trading activity at the March Street Market. Business in livestock, Tibetan medicine, tea and agricultural and local sundries is booming and brisk buying and selling. Like a traditional repertoire that has been played for a thousand of years, the Tea-Horse Trade of old times and goods and materials exchange amount border nationalities of today have framed this classical traditional repertoire.
This is a street market has lasted for a thousand years. When people seek after and closely follow the remains of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road once lay thousands of miles in Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet, they shall be reminded of the March Street Market that once was a part of the history of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road and today is the perfectly conserved Non-material Heritage of Mankind in Dali. As for the author, a native of Dali, an important town the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, is obliged to make efforts and contributions in the promotion of the history and culture of tea of Bai people.