The "back" song of life on the ancient tea horse road

On the ancient tea-and-horse road of the Millennium Sichuan-Tibet line, there is a tragic life "back" song that is little known. Because the roads of Sichuan Ya'an and other tea-producing areas entering the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were cut off by the Erlang Mountain and other towers, the dangerous mountain roads could not even pass through the Hummer. For thousands of years, the tea from the Sichuan-Tibetan Tea Horse Road entered the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is necessary to rely on manpower to carry through layers of shackles to Kangding, a distribution center for Tibetan materials. The husband is often accompanied by more than a dozen people, including the older four or fifty, the young but the twelve or three years old, and even many women join.

In the long journey of about one month, the husbands carry 30 to 150 kilograms of tea, climb over snow-capped mountains, cliffs, and avoid the bandits. When they are hungry, they eat corn borers and thirst. I drank the mountain spring snow water, and at night I stayed in the “squatting shop” that was opened in the vicinity of the people with extremely difficult conditions... and only exchanged a bit of hard-earned money to support the family. On the way, the husbands were bitter and happy, caring for each other, united and orderly, all the way to the folk songs, singing the ups and downs of life. Until the liberation, with the opening of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway and the Erlang Mountain Tunnel, the career of the husband was disappeared into the long history.