Rediscovering Ancient Tea Horse Road

This has to be Jeff's Route - that's what explorer Jeff Fuchs first thought when he decided to undertake the greatest adventure of his life, following the nearly 6,000-kilometer Ancient Tea Horse Road.

The Canadian expat who has a home in Shangri-La, Yunnan Province, would become the only Westerner to complete the legendary and still mysterious caravan route from China's southern Yunnan Province to the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The 43-year-old adventurer and writer, who speaks both Mandarin and Tibetan, completed the eight-month-long journey joined by eight old Tibetans who had climbed the route. The result is the richly illustrated, 240-page "The Ancient Tea Horse Road - Travels Tibet with the Last Himalayan Muleteers" (2008).

"It was a great piece of history that no Westerner knew about and as a hiker, I had the ability to go find out why the route was so important," says Fuchs, adding he did not expect the route to become a journey about people, but that's what it had turned into.

Fuchs, who has lived for the past decade in Asia, recorded a dozen indigenous cultures along the way and is dedicated to oral history, as well as to tea, about which he lectures extensively.

He was in Shanghai recently to discuss his book and writing at the Shanghai International Literary Festival and at Yew Chung International School of Shanghai where he talked about his adventures, emphasizing the importance of respecting ancient traditions and oral histories. He also spoke to Shanghai Daily.

"The message I would like to give is to look deeper, longer and above all to listen," Fuchs told the students. "I never listened to my grandmother's stories but I was wrong because those stories are life. What is important now is to meet and listen to people face to face."

YCIS Shanghai hosted Fuchs precisely because his life and work stress the importance of listening to, appreciating and understanding different cultures. The school organizes trips in China and abroad, and includes trips to Yunnan Province, quite close to the place where Fuchs conducts his research and expeditions.

Fuchs was born in Ottawa and as a child spent a lot of time in Switzerland where he loved mountains and was inspired to climb them.

"It's something magic, you can look at the world from another different prospective," he said of mountain climbing.

He studied commercial and fine art photography in college and developed a love of Asian culture.

But it was a big leap from being an enthusiastic climber to deciding to hike along the ancient and very dangerous Tea Horse Road, most of which has been obliterated, though sections remain.

But his passion for Asian culture and his desire to spread knowledge about it overcame any hesitation.

"The West doesn't know anything about the magical world of the East. I wanted to do something to interest people, to engage them with this world," Fuchs said.

The route was vital to the Chinese and Himalayan peoples for more than 1,000 years but remained a mystery to the West for almost 13 centuries.

The heart of the trade was tea and horses, hence the name Cha Ma Dao or Tea Horse Road. Strong tea from Yunnan Province was packed into dense bricks and carried by porters in exchange for sturdy little horses from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, much prized by Chinese as war horses in fighting invading nomads in the north. Salt, sugar and other commodities were also taken to Tibet, which also exchanged colorful goods.

The road had several branches. From Yunnan Province it went to India via Myanmar; from Yunnan it also went to Sichuan Province, Tibet and central China. It ran along the eastern foothills of the Hengduan Mountains, a center of tea production, then crossed the mountains and deep canyons of several major rivers, the Jinsha, the Lancang and the Nujiang. Thus, it spanned the two highest plateaus of China (Qinghai-Tibet and Yunnan-Guizhou) before finally reaching India south of the Himalayas.

It was the most important trade route linking the Middle East with the tea growing regions of southern China. The road was a corridor for migration and cultural communication among ethnic groups in western China and a bridge for exchanges with India.

But these are just facts. Fuchs' experience was much more vivid.

"I thought that crossing this road would be something about geography, trade - and why not? about myself - but I was wrong," Fuchs said.

"This is a DNA route, you can know people, you can feel their culture, also from a linguistic point of view. People lived, loved and died in those places. I will never forget the people's story of those far mountains."

In his book he describes his travels and encounters, his emotions and of course his fears.

How can a man crossing the Himalayas does not have any fear? He never thought of giving up.

"For myself, I would never stop," he said, "but at one moment of our climbing, we were about to lose a friend. One of my best friends was heading on the top of the mountain and had some problems. In the end, everything was all right, but the thought that someone wouldn't go back home was always present in my mind."

Along the way Fuchs absorbed the stories of people he met.

"Just think about the two dozens of different dialects along the route and the little portion of society that has not changed in the centuries. It's something we don't have in Europe," he said. "We have amazing mountains but there is no history in it, while in those places I heard about love and life's memories.

"I want to communicate stories about people, not me," he said.

The Ancient Tea Horse Road is also about tea, one of Fuch's passions.

"People can't imagine how many kinds of tea there are," he said. The Pu'er tea from Yunnan was packed into bricks, stacked and wrapped in bamboo leaves for transport. Human "mules' carried enormous loads since they were paid by the brick of tea they delivered.

"For the most remote, battle- and nature-hardened people there was no commodity equivalent to cha (Mandarin for tea), or jia (Tibetan for tea), no route more sacrosanct to so many isolated peoples than Cha Ma Gu Dao (Ancient Tea Horse Road)," Fuchs said.

Despite the rigors and dangers of the journey, his overwhelming feeling is one of satisfaction and happiness.

"My journey is not over yet," Fuchs said. "My life is still attached to that journey." He referred to the recently completed exploration of a previously unexplored portion of the Tea Horse Road stretching from Shangri-La in northwest Yunnan Province to the 4,800-meter Shola Pass north of the sacred Kawa Karpo (Meili) mountain range in northwestern Yunnan. His account will appear first in Outpost Magazine in Canada.

Now Fuchs is back home in Shangri-La in northwestern Yunnan, where he is planning his next trip.

"I'm thinking about going to South America and the Andes", he said.