The Sound of Hooves on the Green Steps

Shuangjiang locks the pass, and the green steps hide the dust. The ancient town of Lushi in the late Qing Dynasty was surrounded by the Lancang River and the Heihui River and was the only throat of the Ancient Tea Horse Road. Shen Ke, the sixth-generation gatekeeper of the Shen family, resigned from office and returned home, only to see the order of the ancient road collapse: the tea merchant Luo Bingtang monopolized the entire trade route, lowering prices and exploiting tea farmers of all ethnic groups; the Yi people in Heishan were burdened with centuries-old ethnic grievances, occupying mountains and robbing goods, and setting up private checkpoints; Brown, Bai, and Tibetan people struggled to survive, and the prosperity of the ancient town was full of torn grievances. The dilapidated Inspection Department without soldiers or pay became Shen Ke's only source of support. On one side are giant businessmen who hold gold and silver private soldiers and plot every step of the way, and on the other side are the Yi people who cling to the mountains and refuse to bow their heads. The contradictions in this ancient town where five ethnic groups live together are accumulating. He used old rules to check and balance monopoly, used justice to reconcile feuds, and gradually stabilized the crumbling tea-horse trade. The tide of the times is rolling in, dynasties are overthrown, and wars are breaking out in troubled times; the flames of the Anti-Japanese War are raging in the southwest. Officials, businessmen, and mountain people of all ethnic groups who used to be tit-for-tat put aside all barriers and guarded the Qinglong Iron Cable Bridge, the lifeline of national survival. When the road enters the deep mountains, the bells of the mules and horses are completely silent, and the seven hundred years of tea and horse civilization slowly come to an end. The hoof prints on the bluestone steps are still clear. After sixty years of ups and downs, trade wars, wars and ethnic symbiosis, the tenacity and character of ordinary people in the southwest borderlands hidden in the mountains and rivers have been written.