Tag Archives: Jeff Fuchs
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Choices, No Choices, and some Courage
Ascending up to the Sho La Pass in northwestern Yunnan in May there would always be a chance of weather issues, but it would still be a surprise when, even at the relatively kind altitudes of 3000 metres, the skies … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Tea and Bloodlines
On foot our team of four puttered and wandered west (often faintly lost) through the Nyanqen Tanghla mountains in Tibet towards Lhasa. Highlights seemed on some days to be every single breath and moment. On other days, the grind of … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – The Great Bend of the Yangtze
It was here at the ‘first bend of the Yangtze’ in Yunnan province that the Mongolian armies of the Yuan Dynasty crossed the great waterway and would ‘take’ the previously independent region into the greater fold of the Middle Kingdom … Continue reading
Tea Horse Chronicles – Remnants
Within the tidy remnants of a former ‘Tea and Horse Trade Office’ in Mingshan County, near Ya’an in Sichuan, Jamyan and I wandered for 25 bizarre and wondrous minutes. As we made our way in to the horse dung and … Continue reading
The Tea Sessions – A New Column with Outpost Magazine
Given the span of time and efforts to immerse in leaves and the lives connected to tea, there aren’t many more satisfying additions than starting up a tea column (in joyous collaboration with Outpost Magazine). These pieces will comprise ‘The Tea … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Other Tales and Sight
Not all stories of the Tea Horse Road were ones of grand expanses, snow caps, or buzzing tea sessions. A friend from the Yi minority invited me to visit his grandmother who had tales of her own to tell. She … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Fields vs Forests
Blankets and ridges of green stimulant leaf lie in rows near Puerh. Here the leaf is entirely industry. Gorgeous industry, but still industry. Local Hani, Han, Yi, Lahu, and Dai pluckers shimmy through the humid air to pluck, pluck, and … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Empress of Cloth
Ponzera, or Benzilan as it is now known, is a small valley town in northwestern Yunnan that lies alongside a headwater stream of the Yangtze River. For its size and population, its contributions to the Tea Horse Road spanned vast … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Way Out, and Out Again
Yeshi and I shared tea with this old memory palace of time. Goat milk and butter were used instead of yak variations. The tea was deadly but his memories as he recounted the days of watching caravans along a portion … Continue reading
Tea Horse Road Chronicles – There Are No Straight Lines Through the Mountains
Not heeding the warnings of Sonam Gelek; I should have known better at this stage of our journey than to plunge onwards without his counsel…but onwards I plunged. Consistently accurate and intuitive, Sonam had warned against our team traversing a … Continue reading