China: 19th century Chinese tea plantation workers picking and sorting tea.

The Tea Horse Road (Cha Ma Dao) was a network of mule caravan paths winding through the mountains of Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet in Southwest China. It is also sometimes referred to as the Southern Silk Road and Ancient Tea and Horse Road. From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan, one of the first tea-producing regions, to India via Burma, to Tibet, and to central China via Sichuan Province. In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt. It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea (typically tea bricks) first spread across China and Asia from its presumed origins in Pu'er county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.