Reimagining the ‘Central Plains’ ( Zhongyuan ) and ‘Borderlands’ ( Bianjiang ): the cultural heritage scholarship of the Ancient Tea Horse Road ( Chamagudao ) of Southwest China

Abstract

It is thirty years since the concept of the Ancient Tea Horse Road (Chamagudao) (ATHR) was formed. Over time it has developed from a scholarly concept to become a significant item in toponymic branding in the tea and tourism industries of Southwest China. As a mobility narrative, the ATHR tells the story of how the diverse peoples of the Southwest forged a collective identity through the production, exchange and consumption of tea. Since its inception the ATHR has made advances even to the point of challenging the once dominant status of the Southern Silk Road. More recently it has also been incorporated into the agenda of the Belt and Road Initiative. Yet whilst the scholarship of the ATHR adds to our understandings of the Southwest, it remains bound to a nationalist historiography and has not realised its ambition to become a recognised transnational route within the international heritage scholarship community. This essay is a tentative effort to introduce the scholarship of the ATHR to a non-Sinophone audience and, at the same time, to offer some suggestions as to how the ATHR as a research project can be expanded to include a more diverse array of interests.

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