KJ Selections: KJ#74

Of Bonds, 'the Word' and Trade
by Jeff Fuchs

             

PHOTO © BY JEFF FUCHS

“There are no straight lines through the mountains.” This ‘truth’ rumbles out of Lobsang’s mouth, a mouth that seems as unyielding and direct as the words that pass through it. I have heard these words before from ancient traders who still remember a time when mule and camel caravans wound their way to and from the great market towns of Asia and the Middle East. The words are a testament to the astonishing geographies involved and gives an inkling of the character necessary to pass unscathed along the ancient trade routes.

Deep black lines criss-cross Lobsang's face, a face both ravaged and enlightened by the earth's elements. Soulful eyes that are calm and fearless stare out. He is a being who has been shaped by another time. Lobsang, through almost eight decades has been trader, muleteer and observer, bearing witness to nature’s mighty forces and human frailties. His long languid body, still powerful hands and a brutally self-sufficient face reflect a life spent in the magnificent and furious eye of mountains, sun and of movement. His character reveal something rare in the modern rush.

“In the days of trade people needed people. This has changed.” This observation is made without judgment but with a voice that is convinced of what it says. It seems that he is incapable of speaking with anything but almost numbing metaphorical clarity. Lobsang should know, as in his time he has ushered caravans along the musk and medicine routes in Xingjiang and Tibet and traded the length of the salt routes of eastern Tibet, which reached up to the Silk Road. He has plodded along most of the six-thousand-kilometer length of the mighty Tea Horse Road through China, Tibet, India and Nepal.

We sit tucked into his small stone hut, speaking of a time when words meant something, when words were expected to intimate behavior. At 4,200 meters, all is close and immediate, with a wind that screams and threatens to throw us into the nearby peaks.  China’s western frontier province of Qinghai (Amdo) is famous for its winter winds and sturdy tribes. Lobsang is of the few ‘ancient' traders left to recount the ‘human' side of trade, upon which the ‘business' of trade depended. On my own travels through the nomadic regions to find these last relics of the physical age of voyage, there is often this forceful reminder of trade's inextricable link to community. In the ‘frontier' lands which caravans inevitably had to forge through on their voyages, a trader, caravan — anyone, one had to understand very quickly the informal ways and honor codes of the tribes. 

For over a millennium traders have forged, suffered and given life along the globe's great tradeways, hauling trinkets, essentials — anything that could be transported — thousands of kilometers through some of nature's most unforgiving terrain.

Whether winding through rippled black folds of the Himalayas or meandering through wind blown taupe deserts, both the risks and ‘profits' of trade were great. Along these trade routes, through isolated cultures and landscapes these ‘journeys' joined peoples, products and ideas across huge lands like a giant rosary. It is perhaps this role as unofficial ‘joiner' that the routes played, that has gone flickering, barely noticed.

Geographies are given lifeblood by the peoples that inhabit them and it was the peoples that more often than not, defined the ‘success' (or not) of both the caravans and more importantly, trade itself.  Relationships, bonds and that almost forgotten virtue, honor, were crucial along the almost mythical trade routes. Crucial enough for traders to refer to an oft-quoted ‘mountain maxim' and philosophy, when describing voyages: “Cooperate or perish."

While scholars and history have painstakingly noted the sheer numbers and statistics of trade; the precious cargoes, distances and economics, there is seldom mention of that wonderfully understated intangible, that allowed for thousands of years of uninhibited travel: relationships. Before an agreement was made, a relationship was sought. Banditry, intrigue and bloodshed existed and rash greed always hovered in the minds of men. Ultimately though, codes of conduct prevailed along routes because without them the long links and economies themselves would founder. Trade needed, beyond any other single element, these unwritten codes.  In the magnificent and brutal lands that constituted the frontiers, power rested with relationships. Months' long journeys, like many of life's great efforts, required more than material incentives and monetary rewards to complete; they needed the generosity of hosts and a unity of purpose. Traders, leaders, handlers, taxmen, and indigenous dwellers were all privy to these agreements.

Throughout Asia, trust in the individual overrides trust in the institution, and to this day remains true. Relationships thrived or broke apart based upon trust, and in the spirit of that personal approach, the finicky business of trade was no different along the trade corridors. Nothing supported this informal claim more than the words I would hear while trekking along a portion of a trade road in northern Tibet in the hallucinatory spaces of the Nyanqentanglha Mountains. Yet another ancient muleteer speaking in the informal way ‘oral cultures' summed up his disgust with the observation of the modern world's character saying,“What strange times we live in now, where a handshake and someone's word mean nothing; where people need a paper contract to trust an oath.”

Words and sharing sealed ‘deals'. A cup of tea often bound a ‘contract', as to share the fluid was the equivalent of an ‘oral signature'. “An old saying hinted at tea's importance in the lives of the mountain people: ‘Yak butter tea is a more lasting possession than a son.' The sharing of tea was considered binding, cups of the thick liquid taking the place of signatures. When tea wasn't offered, it was a sure sign that there would be no relationship.” (P. 29, The Ancient Tea Horse Road)

Traders, government representatives and outsiders sat down with locals and shared a cup, a meal and a conversation and then discussions could begin about crossing lands unscathed, but not before. As much as trade has been the dominion of colonial powers, rarely were feudal warlords, nomads or indigenous peoples not pivotal in the link.

One brash saying of Xinjiang in northwestern China, the abode of Uygers, Tibetans, Kazakhs and Mongols, speaks to this: “Trade originated in the lands in between.” Without the links, no ends could meet.

Even the binding cup of tea supports the essential informality of an agreement in the times of trade. Tea, an exotic item, brought from far away; a tender leaf of infinite value from lands never seen, shared between strangers — often enough to ensure a safe passage. Salts, medicines, items of trade were often imparted to hosts and towns that provided hospitality as they had far more worth than any monetary commodities. Many of the traders who lived and died along the great trade routes were illiterate with no need to sign anything, as a verbal agreement was an agreement that carried weight; the weight of one's honor and that of one's entire family, and the weight of accountability. The temporal nature of trade ironically, was bound to that which was eternal, the word. Buddhism too aided and spread its touch along routes because of its emphasis on compassion and peace — both requisites to keeping trade (and humans) alive and harmonious.

Just as precious items of trade passed along the routes, so too did reputations and gossip. Bodies and trade items would come and go but one’s word was like the skin, it remained with one. Rough, dusty and worn traders were often treated with deference, with a kind of awe. After all it was they who were the brave conduits of products and tales. One of the rarely mentioned qualities of the ancient trade routes was their unofficial role as a ‘connector’ of peoples and ideas. For centuries, exotic treats from leagues away, tales of distant cultures and customs funneled into isolated communities, giving remote villages and communities a hint, a whiff of the lands beyond their own.

Along with economies, a knowledge of the ‘outside world' developed, a sense of what lie beyond view, making the trade routes funnels of education. While nations might simply be referred to as ‘the lands under the mountains" or ‘the peoples beyond two deserts," the fact that it was known at all to the isolated peoples so distant is amazing. Communities hidden from all knew by way of the caravans that there was a grand breadth of life and land beyond the hovering horizons.

As important as trade was, thieving, deception and murder was alive and well and not that every word or promise held, but for those that went against these codes, these pledges, punishment was (just as the people and land were) swift and unambiguous. During a trek along the shattered remains of an archaic salt route in eastern Tibet, I would hear a blunt declaration supporting this claim of the sanctity of trade and its tributaries. The bearer of these words was another of the ‘ancients’ who inevitably struck me as part warrior, part philosopher. His insight was remarkably keen despite a vertical scar that bisected his brow:

“"One could war and kill, steal and undermine – these things are inevitable, but to disturb the trade caravans was to invite instant death and eternal suffering. Tampering with the caravans was tampering with the very links and relationships of man, as it was not only the goods one disturbed, it was the harmony. It was an unforgivable sin. It has been like this since trade began.”

In the present time when so much ‘established' order is legitimately doubted, when written contracts and ethics seem almost contradictory, it is perhaps time to revisit or at least pay homage to the ‘old ways' and a time when one sat down with a tea, a meal and took that magic word, ‘time', with people. Trade along the great routes continued unabated for thousands of years functioning because of economic necessity, and a collective understanding of the need to keep it alive and vital. But it also thrived due to relationships.

A sweet irony that the tenacious men and women who traded, lived and loved along the great trade routes, knew and managed so well through the centuries, spoke and do still speak of that elusive quality of ‘character'.

Again the words of a trader to speak to the bonds that held people in times far more difficult than now: “Tell the tale of these ancient highways and remind people that for thousands of years man and the land had an unending relationship that depended on good will and guile. People forget how much was risked, to bring goods from one land to another. They forget how much we once needed each other."

Might be time to remember those wise words once again.

Jeff Fuchs made an almost 5,000 km, seven-month journey from the ancient tea forests of Yunnan into Tibet and beyond, which resulted in Ancient Tea Horse Road (Penguin-Viking 2008). In addition to a dozen publications on three continents, his work can be seen at www.jefffuchs.com