WSJ: The Tea Horse Road Yunnan

The Tea Horse Road Yunnan

Here’s a great article on the Tea Horse Road Yunnan by Debra Bruno and Anne-Sophie Markus with the Wall Street Journal. with photos by from the Wall Street Journal on Shaxi and mentions Old Theatre Inn. If you are unable to read the article online, we have included excerpts here. Enjoy!

Along the Tea Horse Road in China’s Yunnan Province

Tea Horse Road Yunnan near Lijiang
Anne-Sophie Markus for The Wall Street Journal

Baisha Holiday Resort is housed in 800-year-old courtyard homes overlooking Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

On the dashboard of our van, a solar-powered Tibetan prayer wheel spins continuously as we make our way through the bumpy roads linking Lijiang, Dali and Tengchong.

After our fourth or fifth near-collision, I begin to stare at that miniature golden cylinder. Maybe a little Buddhist intervention will save us from crashing into a truck laden with giant boulders or plunging off the road into the canyons below. We had come to see the northwest part of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar and Tibet, an ancient landscape that is rapidly changing. With the countless shops in fake-historic Lijiang selling identical Yunnan handicrafts, along with the rowdy backpacker scene in Dali, sections of Yunnan are being lost to the kind of tourism that involves busloads of passengers wearing matching baseball caps. Lijiang, “restored” in the ancient style after a 1996 earthquake, was exactly the sort of place we wanted to avoid. Having lived in China for almost two years, we had already seen “Impression West Lake,” Zhang Yimou’s over-the-top evening extravaganza in Hangzhou, so there was no need to take in “Impression Lijiang,” set against the backdrop of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. And if we wanted to fight crowds like those on the cable car up the mountain, we could stay home in Beijing and wander through the Forbidden City on a hot summer day. Shaxi, located roughly halfway between Lijiang and Dali, turned out to be the perfect antidote. It feels as removed from the modern world as Lijiang—where you can find McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC—is immersed in it. A stop on the so-called tea-horse road (sometimes called the Southern Silk Road) for centuries, Shaxi today is placid and friendly, its quiet disturbed only by the occasional pigs or turkeys wandering through the cobblestone town square.

Tea Horse Road Yunnan ricefields
Anne-Sophie Markus for The Wall Street Journal

The rice fields of Shaxi Valley

Walking around, we could imagine what it was like to be among the traders of old. The roads linked China to Tibet, Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia, bringing Yunnan’s tea to the world in a network that “vastly predates the modern world,” says Ed Jocelyn, founder of Red Rock Trek, a tour-guide company based in Dali.

We were far from the first foreigners to trek these parts. The Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock lived near Lijiang from the 1920s to 1940s and cataloged the area’s people, plants and languages with a thoroughness that hasn’t been upstaged since. His Yunnan was a far rougher place, with bandits attacking caravans and yak-butter-greased rope slides being used to ferry both people and terrified horses across raging rivers. At one point he describes a village as “charmingly situated, if not overclean.” In Shaxi, we stayed in Laomadian Lodge, a restored inn once used by tea and horse traders, and it was easy to envision them trudging up the narrow wooden stairs and resting inside the low-ceiling rooms. Today, the inn features slate-floored bathrooms and other modern updates. In the evening, a handful of tourists walked around the town square, which includes a Buddhist temple and a restored theater that now houses a trading-route museum. Fueled by a surprisingly good cappuccino from the nearby Old Tree Café (now that’s modernization I can get behind), we met our guide, Frank Hitman, for a hike to the base of a mountain called Shibaoshan, or Stone Treasure Mountain. This region of China is famed for its biodiversity, a contrast to Beijing, where we make do with tightly landscaped parks and a few sad birds. Unesco says that the area known as “Three Parallel Rivers”—the Yangtze, Nu and Mekong—may harbor “the richest biodiversity among the temperate areas of the world,” with 6,000 species of plants and endangered species such as the red panda. As the heat, elevation and birdcalls increased, I started to think of the hike as a Buddhist boot camp. Maybe true awakening comes through sweat. A few hours later we were rewarded with the sight of the Shizhong temple, which includes 16 grottoes carved in the reddish rock that date back to the eighth century. Yunnan’s ethnic diversity and links to the outside world have meant that the province is home to several forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, animist religions such as Dongba, and other faiths. More than one statue can be seen in the grottoes at Shizhong, including a layman, Vimalakirti, whose worried facial expression stands out in contrast to the serene Buddhist visages. It’s possible he was worried about what we saw next: something called the Yoni Shrine, a miniature grotto with a carving that may or may not be connected to worship of female reproduction. A tourist from Guangzhou began telling us about the other intimate body parts he’s seen represented on his travels, and our faces started to take on the look of Vimalakirti as we inched away.Tea Horse Road Yunnan Shaxi Baoxing temple

Anne-Sophie Markus for The Wall Street Journal The mountaintop Baoxiang temple in ShaxiThe Buddhist boot camp continued with a post lunch hike to Baoxiang, another mountaintop temple. Mist rising from a nearby waterfall cooled us as well as a colony of macaques, who eyed us for snack potential and, unimpressed, settled into the arms of a statue. The mist made it feel as if the religious site was suspended in midair, which added to the holy feeling even if it wasn’t clear which of the many deities could take credit. A few more hours of driving under the protection of our solar prayer wheel added yet another religious faith to the mix. As we dodged traffic and headed south, we saw minarets in the distance. Muslim towns are scattered across the plains, populated by the Hui, who were converted by the Mongolian invaders and played a critical role in trade as drivers of the caravans on the tea-horse road. In Donglianhua, a village about 35 kilometers south of Dali, we had a pork-free lunch in a courtyard home owned by the Ma family. The three Ma brothers, having made themselves into wealthy men in Thailand, eventually returned to Yunnan to pour money into restoring the village and the local mosque. As we wandered its grounds, we were greeted by the elderly imam, who showed us a stone tablet used in the past to call the faithful to prayer. Today, the call is piped through loudspeakers that enter individual homes, although while we were visiting, the only call we heard involved an announcement that someone needed to register his car. It was a rare touch of modernity in a place that seemed fixed in time, somewhere in the Ming dynasty.

The Tea Horse Road Yunnan: what you need to know

Getting There: The easiest way is to fly into Lijiang. Many Chinese airlines offer direct flights from more than a dozen Chinese cities, as well as from Hong Kong and Seoul. Other travelers prefer to fly into the smaller Tengchong airport in the south and drive north, although that requires a layover in Kunming.

Getting Around: For the best experience, it’s a good idea to hire a local guide who knows the area. Frank Hitman of Zouba Tours seeks out non-touristy experiences all over Yunnan. Another good choice is Ed Jocelyn of Red Rock Trek, who specializes in tea-horse road excursions. Mr. Jocelyn fell in love with western Yunnan when he was researching his book, “The Long March,” in which he retraces Mao’s historic trek.

Where to Stay: In the town of Shaxi, the Laomadian Lodge offers the feeling of being a trader on the ancient routes. A couple of kilometers or so outside town, the newly restored Old Theatre Inn is a guesthouse with rooms around a theater-temple courtyard and monthly performances of traditional music. Ten kilometers outside Lijiang, the Baisha Holiday Resort is housed in 800-year-old courtyard homes. Many of the rooms have stunning views of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Outside Dali in the village of Xizhou, the Linden Centre offers a restored courtyard home with stunning views of the surrounding rice fields.

Where to Eat: Yunnan cuisine is as varied as the province’s terrain. In Shaxi, Xi Lu offers traditional food and nightly musical performances from the town’s residents, who play the erhu and other traditional string instruments, while young girls sing. Ou Yang Guesthouse also serves meals in a pomegranate-tree-shaded courtyard. (The restaurants are a short walk from the main cobblestone square; visitors should ask around.) In the Muslim village of Donglianhua, about 30 kilometers south of Dali, informal arrangements can be made for lunch at one of the Ma family courtyards. One of the homes is being converted into a guesthouse, but it wasn’t open when we visited.

Tea Horse Road Yunnan view from Shibaoshan
Anne-Sophie Markus for The Wall Street Journal

The view from Shibaoshan