Bartering Of Tea And Horse

Early Asian nomadic groups considered tea a catholicon that could cure all diseases. People ate tea leaves together with salt, garlic and dried fish, which was like what happened in Europe when tea first arrived there. Like Han nationality, minor nationalities of China also accepted and loved tea. They needed tea leaves from areas under Chinese government's domination, so tea directly concerned the harmony among different nationalities. Dynasties after Tang all governed borderlands through tea, believing that tea was "more powerful than thousands of soldiers." Song Dynasty even tried to force Yuan Hao (1003-1048) — king of Western Xia, a kingdom founded by a minor nationality-to surrender by cutting off its provision of tea.

Inland China produced lea leaves while northwest minor nationalities abounded in horses. In early Tang Dynasty, Han people usually exchanged silk for horses from ethnic groups. Tea was not in the major place in the bilateral trade, and leaves got by ethnic groups were only used for nobilities' consumption- After its middle period, Tang Dynasty was busy suppressing incessant insurrections. It needed large amounts of horses, but exchanging horses with silk was a losing proposition, so rulers decided to trade tea leaves for war horses in urgent need. Meanwhile, like in inland China, tea spread from nobilities to plebeians and merged into their lives. A story had it that Tang government wanted to exchange tea for horses with Hui He (a minor nationality in northwest China) but was refused. Hui He didn't want tea leaves but preferred to offer 1,000 horses in exchange for Lu Yu and the book of tea. Officials of Tang Dynasty looked all around for this book. In the end poet Pi Rixiu (c.834-883) got one and solved this urgent matter. This story shows that drinking tea has become a fashion among ethnic groups then and tended to be more and more refined. Song, Ming and Qing dynasties after Tang all inherited the business pattern of trading tea for horses, so the history of bartering of tea and horse must have reached over 1,000 years.