Tea Road To The Skies: A Journey On China’s Most Ancient Road
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It crosses the roof of the world, winding more than 2,400 tortuous miles across 20 mountain chains and two desert plateaus. It spans four great rivers, and cuts through the territory of 26 different ethnic groups. This is the ancient Tea Road, which opens Southwest China onto Tibet – and thereby Nepal, India, Persia, Mongolia and Russia, and then Europe. The legendary Tea Road was crossed by Marco Polo during his travels, but used by innumerable horse trains for countless centuries before him. Their tracks are beaten deep into the rocks. This series of documentaries follows in the hoof prints of those caravans, which hauled their baggage of tea across the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas to be sold in the markets of South West Asia and dispersed throughout the world. Part I: In The Kingdom Of Green Gold It is in the subtropical rainforests of Southwest China that our journey to the land of tea begins. We witness the harvest of wild tea, from the original and gigantic tea trees (camellia sinensis) but also the collecting of cultivated tea, the famous Pu’er Tea which is still cultivated here in the olden ways, by traditional tea planter families who have been here for centuries. The cultivation of tea, t
