What is a "tea-horse exchange"?

Tea-horse trade first appeared in the Tang Dynasty, but it didn't become customized until the Song Dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty, Tea and Horse Department was established all over the country, and they decided to buy a racecourse. In the seventh year of Xining, Song Shenzong (1075), the court sent Pu Zongmin, the judge of the Third Division of Salt and Iron, to Sichuan to set up a tea-horse institution to exchange tea for horses and solve the problem of war horses used by the court for foreign troops.

Although there are many places to buy horse farms in Sichuan, the horse farms that can maintain business all the year round are Lizhou, Yazhou, Xuzhou and Luzhou. Among them, the horse farm in Yazhou area can be regarded as a "star enterprise". There are three horse farms in Yazhou, namely Yazhou Horse Farm, Yazhou Lingguan Town Horse Farm and Yazhou Diaomenzhai Horse Farm. Yazhou Maimachang is the "Tea Horse Ancient Temple" (now restored to the former site of "Tea and Horse Department") which was wrongly called to the east of Xindianchang in Mingshan County. Later, Baizhang set up a horse farm. Mingya area is the connecting zone between Chengdu Plain and minority land, and the trade is naturally active. Lingguan Town is located in Baoxing County, and Diaomen Village is located in Tianquan.

At that time, the famous camellia in the tea-horse trade was a very famous brand. Because "the famous camellia in Weiya is precious to Qiang people", not only the famous camellia is used to buy a horse farm in Asia, but also the famous camellia is used in Xihe and Hippo in Gansu. Besides buying horses in Yazhou, Mingshan tea is also transported by migrant workers from Chengdufu Road to Tianshui, Lintao and Linxia in Gansu to buy horses. At that time, a small number of famous camellia could be sold to government-run tea farms as planned, but they had to hold a "long citation" from local authorities, which is somewhat similar to today's "special commodity business license", otherwise they would be severely punished if they were stopped on the road.