According to some who had once traveled along the Ancient Tea and Horse Road, Pu'er tea is most favored by the Tibetan people. Since the butter tea made of Pu'er tea is highly esteemed both in taste and color, it was named after its producing area -- Pu'er County in Yunnan Province, which is one of the cradles of China's "tea culture". During the Tang Dynasty, Pu'er tea was grown in areas flanking the Langcangjiang River. It was described as having a bitter taste at first, then sweet.

During the World War II, when Myanmar fell into the hands of the Japanese, the Yunnan-Myanmar Highway -- then China's only international thoroughfare -- was cut off. The Ancient Tea Horse Road, extending from Lijiang in Yunnan, to Kangding in Xikang, and then to Tibet and even further into India, was revived and became a major trade route. With the opening of the Yunnan-Tibetan and Sichuan-Tibetan highways in the 1960s, the road declined. Some sections of the famous road, however, are still used for transport purposes. Today, the road comes to the fore again with the development of tourism in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, as well as in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

The road passes through subtropical forests and picturesque lakes and turbulent rivers, such as Langcangjiang, Nujiang, Minjiang and Yarlung Zangbo. Heading west from the Hengduan Mountains, one has to cross many peaks -- each towering 4,000-5,000 meters above sea level. But tea and horses have blazed a trail despite the challenges posed by mountains and forests. Roads devoted to the tea-horse trade linked ethnic groups living in areas near the roads, making them members of the great Chinese nation.

 Two major routes

A Chinese expert researching the Ancient Tea Horse Road recently found a complete map of the road drawn more than 150 years ago by a French missionary. The map reveals that the road traversed a series of towering mountains, with rivers flowing in between from the south to the north. Roughly speaking, there were two main routes:

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