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Dragons, Monk’s Caps, and Butter Tea: The Duomuhu
Have you ever tried Tibetan salty yak butter tea? If you visit a Tibetan household today, chances are the tea will be served in a 多穆壶 (duomuhu) like this. I explore the trajectory of the 多穆壶 (duomuhu) throughout history, and what it tells us about the politics of the Chinese empire.
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The Tea Horse Road
Michael Freeman, photographer and author of ‘Tea Horse Road: China’s Ancient Trade Road to Tibet’, explores the pressed tea bricks in MAA’s collections and the longest trade route in the ancient world.
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Brick Tea and Currency
By Aayushi Gupta In my previous blog post on this object, I pursued one of the clues found on the label on its back. That label also gave us another clue – ‘Given to me by A.C. Haddon 29 Dec 1900’. Who was this tea brick given to? Why did Haddon give it to them?…
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A Tea Brick Destined for Tibet
By Shuzhen Kong Ever tried to guess the flavour of tea just from looking at the leaves or bricks, without brewing? Or even just from photographs of them? Take a look at one example from MAA’s collections with me, and see what we can discover.
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The Russian Brick Tea Trade in Hankou, China
By Aayushi Gupta In the object collections at MAA I found nine tea bricks – six from China, two from Tibet, and one unknown source. Encountering Russian inscriptions, however, did not make sense; were tea bricks produced in Russia? Where did they travel, and how did they get there?
Welcome to the MAA Digital Lab
MAA Digital Laboratory 