Matt Chitwood spent two years as an ICWA fellow (2017-2019) in rural Yunnan, China’s southwestern-most province. In his home village of Bangdong, population 350, he was surrounded by hillsides of tea, walnuts and coffee—the lifeblood of his neighbors. His research and writing focused on how infrastructure development in Yunnan was rapidly transforming its people, land, economy and governance during a major government campaign to end rural poverty.
Matt is currently director of Edelman Public & Government Affairs’ China portfolio and Global Voice initiative, where he advises on regulatory challenges and thought leadership across industries.
Matt concluded his fellowship with a 2,000-mile motorcycle trip along an old trade route known as the ancient tea horse road. Along the way, he witnessed traditions of tea cultivation and hospitality that have spanned millennia as well as the new infrastructure and technologies that were revolutionizing life. A few months later, the outbreak of the Covid pandemic halted travel in China and most of the world.
YUNNAN PROVINCE, China (December 2019) — The traffic police unit in this region’s city of Lincang had never before issued a motorcycle license to a foreigner. Phone calls went up the chain of command and instructions came down: get a new visa, change your Chinese name, prove you have at least nine fingers and take a driving test in Mandarin. Months of red tape and one failed exam later, I was licensed to ride.
I bought my motorcycle from a foreigner who was leaving Yunnan for good. He had dreamed of exploring the province’s backcountry but with a wife and two kids, his sense of adventure always deferred to his sense of responsibility. I had no such qualms, and so it was that I scored a two-year old Shineray with only 700 miles on it. The cherry red bike—a 400cc dual-sport—had enough power for Yunnan’s new highways and also knobby tires for the rough back roads that crisscross its mountainous terrain. Both would prove useful as I explored the ancient tea horse road.
The old trade route stretches from Yunnan’s southern tropics to the Tibetan plateau in the north and has been carved step-by-step over a thousand years by caravans swapping tea leaves for warhorses, salt, cloth or medicines. In fact, it was more a trade network than a single road. A web of trails extends down to Southeast Asia and westward through Tibet to India, connecting the region’s isolated and disparate people groups through a flow of goods, technology, ideas, religion and culture.
Today, the ancient tea horse road has fallen into disuse, but a network of new highways, power lines and cell towers now connects the region, sometimes alongside the remnants of hoof-worn stones. As modern development sweeps across the province, lives are being transformed. Subsistence farmers previously threatened by poor yields and famine now eat meat at every meal. Cultures once remote are now for the first time connected to the modern economy.
From August to October 2019, I rode my motorcycle more than 2,000 miles along Yunnan’s section of the ancient tea horse road. My trip was sufficiently ill-timed to catch both the monsoon season in the south and onset of winter winds in the north. But it was full of wonder. I hiked the mountains where tea is said to have been discovered and spoke with the ancients who still remember mule caravans carrying loads through the streets. I met farmers, construction workers and religious pilgrims all seeking better lives. I waited as work crews cleared landslides from pockmarked mountain roads and painted yellow stripes on freshly asphalted highways. And near Shangri-La, as I sputtered to a standstill in a tunnel at 13,000 feet, I learned that even motorcycles can suffer altitude sickness.
I also discovered that despite unprecedented change along the ancient tea horse road, one thing remains: the centrality of tea. It still connects the region, not only through trade but also hospitality—the invariable invitation to a cup of tea, conversation and a new friendship. I was the undeserving recipient of such kindness time and again.
My journey ended at the border between Yunnan and Tibet. Security is strict and I didn’t have the tour guide, private driver, tour group and travel visa required for entry.
“But you do have a motorcycle license, correct?” the officer asked me.
“Of course,” I assured him, recalling the grueling red tape and failed exam. I’d been asked to show it at only two of the countless checkpoints along my entire 2,000-mile journey.
“Well, I’m not going to check,” he said, as if doing me a favor. “Would you like some tea?”
Top photo: Matt’s motorcycle
