Tea is the most important drink on the plateau, and Tibetan tea drinking has reached the level of "indispensable". Tea was produced in the interior and began to be introduced during the reign of King Akatsumatsu (676-704). The Red History records: "During his (Chidusong) reign, there was a large amount of tea in Tibet, and instrumental music was ......The "Brief History" written by the neighbor Gui Xiangba also said: "When the Tibetan king was Songmang Bojie, he had a flute and got tea from the Han land. "The ancient Tibetan book "Han-Tibetan Historical Collection" records the story of the introduction of tea, and it seems that tea was not introduced as a drink at that time, but as a medicine. By the time of the Tibetan Emperor Trisong Detsen (742-797), tea drinking had already begun to flourish in the Tibetan royal palace.
According to the Tang Dynasty's "Supplement to the History of the Kingdom", Changlu Gong sent an envoy to Tibet, and the Tibetan king Trisong Detsen showed him a collection of various famous teas, and the tea varieties in the Tubo palace were already very complete at that time. According to the "Banquet of the Wise", there were five merchant officials at the time of Zanpu Trisong Dezan, one of whom was a Handi tea merchant, who was in charge of the purchase and sale of tea.
Since the beginning of the first century, tea drinking has become popular throughout Tibet, and more and more tea leaves are needed. Most Tibetans live in alpine areas above three or four thousand meters above sea level, and mainly eat indigestible foods such as beef and mutton meat, barley, and cheese. The heat of barley is incomprehensible if it is not tea" ("Dew Dew"). Their favorite tea is the side tea produced in and its surrounding areas in Sichuan, Ya'an, which is the earliest and most famous tea-producing area in China. According to the "Chronicles of Tianquan County", in the early years of Tang Zhenguan (627-649), the martyr General Meng "picked tea seeds in Mengshan (Ya'an) and planted them all over the valley", "taught his people the method of tea picking and roasting". "Ya'an County Chronicle" also said, "In the history of Ya'an, its tea trees are the exclusive benefit of a county." Since the late Tang Dynasty, Ya'an and its surrounding counties of Tianquan, Yingjing, Mingshan and Qionglai have been marketed in the Duokang and Tibetan areas, and have been very popular with the Tibetan people. There is a folk song in Lhasa that says:
The black Han tea is built into a wall, which is higher than the hill in the east;
The temperament of the Ya'an girl is longer than the blue river.
Tibetan areas need tea, Han areas need mules and horses and other native products, "tea and horse exchange", "tea and soil exchange", carried out on different scales in the Tang-Tibet border. At that time, it was after the Tang and Tibetan alliances, and the border between the two countries was good. Tea and horse exchange once or several times a year, every market day, tea bags piled up, mules and horses from all over the meeting, people of all nationalities all night long, playing songs and dancing, drinking and carnival, like the grandest festival. "Zizhi Tongjian" records that in 903, the lord of Shu Wang Jian read horses in Xingsu Mountain in Chengdu, and there were as many as 12,000 war horses, which he exchanged from the Tibetans of Wen (now Wenxian County, Gansu), Li (now Hanyuan County, Sichuan), Wei (now Li County, Sichuan), and Mao (now Maowen County, Sichuan) with tea produced in Sichuan.
In the Song Dynasty, the "tea and horse exchange" was further developed and improved. Song Shenzong appointed Wang Anshi as the prime minister, promulgated a new law, made great efforts, and strongly recommended Wang Shao to run Xi (now Lintao) and He (now Linxia). Wang Shao noted the important value of horses for farming and warfare, and pointed out that "the Western (Tibetan) people are quite good at horses to the border, and they are only fond of tea, but lack tea and the city". The imperial court adopted his suggestion and set up the tea and horse division in the capital, specializing in the tea and horse market. At that time, Li, Ya (now Ya'an, Sichuan) and other prefectures produced more than 30 million catties of Shu tea annually, and it was stipulated that the government would exchange the special tea for the horses. Later, with the southern invasion of Western Xia, the northern "horse road obstruction", the Song Dynasty moved the location of the "Tea and Horse Market" south to Sichuan. Li, Ya and other prefectures are not only the production areas of tea, but also an important market for the exchange of tea and horses, and more than 20,000 horses are imported into the Song Dynasty every year. In this way, it not only alleviated the need for war horses in the wars with the Liao, Jin, and Xixia tribes in the north, solved the problem of serious shortage of agricultural and cultivated animals, but also further enhanced the economic exchanges between the two nationalities on the basis of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, and played an important role in the stability of the motherland and the unity of Han and Tibet, leaving behind a historical story that has been passed down from generation to generation.