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Lux Lijiang
Lux, Tea Horse Road Lijiang is a luxury boutique hotel in Lijiang, set in Lijiang’s ancient town, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
This boutique hotel in Lijiang offers luxurious and spacious accommodation alongside exceptional local experiences to connect guests with the essence of Lijiang and its stunning surroundings.
Designed as a typical courtyard-shaped residence, Lux Lijiang is one of the most charming luxury hotels in Lijiang and offers a simple, fresh and sensory approach to showcasing the renowned ‘city of bridges’.
What’s so Special?
Lux Lijiang, Tea Horse Road is a boutique hotel in Lijiang that celebrates its location, both in the architecture and in the cultural experiences available.
Experiences on offer include Naxi cooking classes directly from Baisha villagers, learning about the legendary Pu’er tea with in-house tea ceremonies and horse riding through the forests and meadows surrounding Lijiang.
Tea Horse Road
Between the 7th century and the middle of the 20th, one of the longest trade routes in the Ancient World, more than 3,000 kilometres, carried tea from its homeland in the deep south of Yunnan to Tibet.
It was added to by a route from a second source, the tea mountains of Sichuan, and the combined network of stone roads and mountain trails became known as the Tea Horse Road, Cha Ma Dao.
This was much more than a simple trade route, because in return for tea, which Tibetans came quickly to crave, the Tang dynasty wanted horses for the Imperial Army.
The route came under strict control, as the trading of tea for war horses became an arm of Tang foreign policy in its dealing with a neighbour that had risen from a loose collection of tribal societies to a military power on the empire’s northwestern border.
As the trade developed, it became a saga of epic proportions, combining a true odyssey of a journey, long and difficult, with exchanges between very different cultures.
There were two main routes, which joined at the eastern Tibetan market town of Mangkham (Markam).
The longer, and original, began in the tea mountains of Xishuangbanna close to the Burmese border, most of it converging first on the town that gave the name to the tea, Pu’er.
From this gathering point, caravans set off north. The main route went through Weishan, first capital of the kingdom of Nanzhao, then Dali its successor capital, along the western shores of Lake Erhai, on to Shaxi and Heqing, then the Great Bend of the Yangtse and on to the caravanserais of Lijiang.
North again through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Zhongdian (renamed in 2001 as Shangri-La), then past Meili Snow Mountain and along the upper Mekong (Lancang) River.
The second source of a different tea was western Sichuan, and caravans, aided by human porters over Erlong Mountain, carried the tea west to join the Yunnan route and continue to Lhasa.
These are the broad strokes, but the Tea Horse Road was a network, in some stretches coalescing into one, in others a mesh of narrow trails, particularly crossing the gorges and the Hengduan Range onto the Tibetan plateau.
There were secondary routes, such as up the Nujiang gorge, and across upper Myanmar. It continued, in all its complexity, until the middle of the 20th century, halted first by the events leading up to the 1949 creation of the People’s Republic of China, and then simply by lorries.
Horse caravans still work the remote trails, but not carrying tea, and their numbers fall as China’s transport infrastructure develops.
2019 - 20 Price Guide:
- 3 nights from £780 pp
Includes:
- International Flights from the UK
- 3 nights accommodation with breakfast
- All taxes
- Private car airport transfers
This is a guide price only, based on travel in low season.
Prices will vary according to availability of airfares on the dates of travel and seasonal hotel and airfare surcharges.
Please ask us for any current special offers.
Jasmine Bonus:
- Includes Daily American Breakfast
Contact Us:
All of our China Holidays are tailor made and we can put together any kind of China tour to suit your interests and budget.
Call us now to speak to a China holiday expert about your tailor made China holiday or honeymoon to China.
Call us now on 0333 7000 747
We're open from 9 until 9 daily and our 0333 number is a local rate number included in most call packages.
