Mingjie Zhu

Mingjie Zhu

June 01, 2025

Ancient tea-horse road, Sichuan-Yunnan trade, Tea-horse exchange market, Spatial network.

As one of the most important trans-regional trade networks in the history of Southwest China's borders, the rise and fall of the ancient tea-horse road not only reflects the complex interaction between the geographic environment and human activities, but also carries the deeper logic of multi-ethnic economic symbiosis and cultural intermingling. Since the concept of the ‘Ancient Tea-Horse Road’ was proposed by the academic community in the 1980s, related research has undergone a paradigm shift from expedition records and ethnographic descriptions to interdisciplinary discussions. However, the systematic research on the Yunnan-Chuan section of the trade route is still weak, especially the lack of in-depth interpretation of its operation mechanism and cultural integration function from the perspectives of economic anthropology and historical geography. In the context of ‘cultural heritage protection’, re-examining the spatial reconstruction and cultural symbiosis mechanism of the ancient tea-horse route has both academic value and practical significance.

© 2025, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license