The Ancient Tea-Horse Road

The ancient Tea-horse Road winds and wonders through China's vast west area, across the dangerous hills and rivers of Hengduan Mountain Range, in the wild lands and forests across “the Rooftop of the World”. It is one of the world’s highest and most precipitous ancient roads carrying and spreading civilization and culture, along which are diverse tourist resources including a wide variety of wildlife, colorful ethnic culture, splendid imperial monuments and religious traces.

The Ancient Tea-Horse Road is a passage formed by tea-horse trading in ancient China, based on “tea” from agriculture area of the inner land and “horses” from remote minority areas. As an important means for economic exchange between Han regions and minorities regions, it played a crucial role in communicating among different ethnic groups both economically and culturally. For thousands of years, numerous caravans had been quietly traveling along it.

Along the road, there are sceneries like “Three Parallel Rivers”, high mountains and deep valleys, holy snow mountains and sacred waters, thermal resources and hot springs, grazing lands covered by wild flowers, tents emitting cooking smoke. It is one of the most heart quaking roads on this planet.

And also, the Ancient Tea-Horse Road is an important thread of cultural tourism. It stretches through the ethnic corridor area across Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet. This area is the place where many ethnic groups have been living and multiplying, also a big platform on which they have put on comedies and tragedies in the history. It is a cultural treasury for ever-lasting exploration. Natural wonders, civilization heritage, marks of ancient ethnic customs and countless romantic stories are spread along the Road. It is a sediment of history which contains traces of people’s activities over thousands of years and their persistence to life.

Traveling along the Ancient Tea-Horse Road is a trip to return to the nature, a trip of the harmony between men and the nature, a trip of spiritual neutralization for urban people, and a trip of adventure and discovery.

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