The Ancient Tea Horse Road, with a history of more than 1,000 years, has forged the blood connection between Han and Tibet.
A courtyard with a "Seven Stars Holding the Moon" architectural structure evokes memories that can be found on the Ancient Tea Horse Road.
The Nanmu plaque of "Yuguo Xingjia" on one side expresses the cultural essence of the ancient tea horse road in Ya'an.
With the completion and opening of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway in December 1954, the era of transportation between the mountains and mountains and the ancient tea horse road was ended. With the passage of time, people gradually understood that the Sichuan-Tibet Tea Horse Ancient Road contains too many legends and stories......
The main entrance of the Jiang family's compound Photo: Yi Wenwen
The story begins in the Jiang family compound, known as "Jiang Courtyard", located at No. 187, Minzhu Road, Yingjing County, Ya'an City, Sichuan Province. The Jiang family courtyard is a traditional courtyard structure, a total of three courtyards, the first and second courtyards were built in the late Ming Dynasty, the third courtyard and other courtyards were built in the early Qing Dynasty, because the Jiang family lived and multiplied for hundreds of years, it is the former site of the famous "Yuxing" tea factory on the Sichuan-Tibet line.
The plaque at the front door of the compound reads "Yuxing Tea Shop", which is a well-preserved Qing Dynasty tea number in Ya'an, and is a participant and witness of the ancient tea horse road culture. When you open the gate of the old house, the smell of grass can be heard in the quiet air, the sun is dappled in the courtyard, and the patio is covered with moss that is full of life. A hundred years of changes, those distant stories are now like the color of moss and tender green, which lasts for a long time in the precipitation of years.
"Jiang Family Genealogy" records: In the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Ronghua Gong followed Ji's father Jiang Qigong from Hongya to Xing, started from scratch, and began to cast silver as a business (casting broken silver into one tael, five taels, and ten taels of silver ingots for customers). A wealthy gentleman in the county town was jealous of its booming business, and one day he got drunk on Ronghua Gong and deposited a letter of broken silver to ask for processing into ingots. When he woke up, he saw that it was all fake silver, and he still exchanged it for real silver. The gentry came to pick it up the next day, opened the package for inspection, and left without a word, and since then the reputation of Jiang's integrity has been all over the city.
In 1939, Liu Wenhui took charge of Xikang. In order to alleviate the overstretched local finances, the "Kangzang Tea Industry Co., Ltd." was established, and it was not allowed to sell homemade tea into Tibet. In order to fulfill the previous commercial contract, the Jiang family hired a porter to carry the tea from Yingjing to Ya'an, transported it to Leshan on a bamboo raft, transported it to Wuhan by waterway, transported it to Shanghai by truck, transported it to India by ocean freighter, and then entered Tibet from India. The Jiang family's tea shines in the reputation of the Tibetan people, and the Jiang family, who value quality and trust, has gradually accumulated fame.
The plaque of the Jiang family's compound "Yuguo Xingjia" Photo: Yi Wenwen
Crossing the threshold of the Jiang family's compound, the old house and the old eaves, several clouds. The plaque on the gate is written "Yuguo Xingjia" four eye-catching big characters, from the first year of Guangxu to the third year of Guangxu, there are two county officials who have written plaques for the Jiang family three times, which shows the status of the Jiang family in the society at that time. The four-character font of "Yuguo Xingjia" is vigorous and thick, strong and smooth, and the meaning it contains clearly reflects the thoughts and pursuits of the owner of the house, and shows the foundation of the Jiang family compound and the Jiang family.
The compound covers an area of more than 2,000 square meters, is a typical wooden structure through the bucket type building, its roof load and floor load, by the corner and the floor slab to the purlin, and then by the purlin to the wooden column, the wooden column then through the column base to convey the load to the foundation, the building structure force and force transmission path is simple and clear, so the compound has withstood hundreds of years of wind and rain and earthquake lightning strikes, is still very firm. The doors, windows, roof ridges, pillar piers and other aspects of the courtyard are rich in artistic characteristics, and the fine carvings and reliefs are ingenious and lifelike, which contain the distinctive characteristics of the houses in western Sichuan, reflecting the cultural accomplishment of the wealthy merchants of Yingjing generation of side tea, and also reflecting the ideological and cultural connotation of the mainland's loyalty and filial piety etiquette and Fulu Suxi.
In 1939, Sun Mingjing photographed the gate of the Jiang family's compound Remake: Yi Wenwen
In 1939, Sun Mingjing, one of the pioneers of Chinese film education and a teacher at Jinling University at the time, conducted a systematic investigation of Xikang, and also left precious video materials for the Jiang family compound. He photographed the scene at the gate of the Jiang family's compound at that time: under the plaque of "Yuxing Tea Shop", there was a wooden sign of "Kangzang Tea Co., Ltd. First Manufacturing Factory", and there was a tea bag on both sides of the door, all of which were nine, and there was a female porter on the left, who was tying tea bags, and the whole tea bag was estimated to be 200 catties, and at that time, the weight of the male porter was about 300 catties.
For thousands of years, the Ancient Tea Horse Road has left behind countless caravanserai and trade legends that have been passed down by future generations. On the mottled ancient road, the sound of horses' hooves has long been gone, but the cultural heritage contained in the ancient road is endless, the story of the Jiang family compound is still vivid, and the ideal of "prosperous country" is still continuing. (China Tibet Net/Yi Wenwen, Zhang Mengmeng, Zhang Yu)