Ancient Tea Horse Road reinvents itself through heritage and slow travel

KUNMING — After years of living in China, Antonio from Spain discovered a new passion for the intricate world of tea, noting that his trip through Yunnan in Southwest China sparked this love.

On his days off, he often takes European tourists along the ancient Tea Horse Road to explore the crossroads of tea and coffee cultures along this thousand-year-old trade route. Once, the route connected tea mountains in Southwest China to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and beyond.

For centuries, the Tea Horse Road was a bustling corridor for caravans trading tea for horses. Today, the bells of the horse caravans have faded, but the road is reinventing itself as a premier destination for "slow travel" and cultural immersion.

The legacy of the ancient caravans lives on in local cuisine. In Yunnan's tea-growing areas, restaurants serve "new caravan dishes" like coffee-glazed ribs and tea-infused beef. These flavors mix the trail's rough history with modern culinary creativity.

In Ning'er Hani and Yi autonomous county, the starting point of many ancient routes, tourism is becoming hands-on. Qu Shishuai, a traveler from Hangzhou in eastern China, recently spent his vacation at a local workshop. There, he learned the traditional steps of making tea: withering, rolling, pressing and drying.

"I didn't just learn a skill; I walked away with a tea cake I made myself," he says.

Further north, in Shaxi Ancient Town in Dali, the hoofprints of ancient horses are still etched into the stone bridge. Now, though, those hoofprints lead to a modern bookstore housed in a repurposed granary, where the aroma of fresh coffee mingles with traditional folk songs.

In 2023, the Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er became UNESCO's first tea-themed World Heritage site. This has raised global recognition of the ancient road even more.

Tea is at the heart of daily life on Jingmai Mountain. It is used in everything from weddings to resolving conflicts. These deep cultural roots are drawing a new wave of travelers who aren't just visiting for a day; they are staying for months, picking tea in the morning and watching the sea of clouds from hillside cafes in the afternoon.

Data show that from January to November 2025, Yunnan hosted over 4.98 million long-term visitors, a nearly 55 percent increase year-on-year.

The province's "residential tourism" has brought new life to over 800 villages, creating about 63,500 local jobs and increasing the average monthly income for participating farming households by over 2,700 yuan ($385.6).

The ancient Tea Horse Road is also attracting an increasing number of international tourists as China's expanded visa-free policies have brought a surge of foreign visitors to remote villages. To suit international tastes, Antonio has noticed that villagers are adding Western breakfast items to their traditional tea service.

As the ancient path turns into a place for "slow life", it keeps telling a story of connection, linking the past to the present, and China to the world.