In late autumn of 2024, Zhejiang Satellite TV's "Running Man: Ancient Tea Horse Road" exploded the entire network with a "slow variety show" attitude. Li Chen, Zheng Kai and other guests experienced the caravan's travel ceremony at the Nakoli Post Station in Pu'er. When faced with the ancient custom of "throwing shoes to ask for directions", Sha Yi's embarrassing situation of accidentally throwing cloth shoes into the stream became a hot search. The aerial footage of the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest presented in the program allowed the audience to intuitively experience the ecological wonders of the symbiosis of the thousand-year-old tea forest and the village for the first time-five ancient tea forests like jade necklaces surround 9 Bulang and Dai villages, and more than 1 million ancient tea trees stretch their branches and leaves in the clouds at an altitude of 1,500 meters.
This seven-day "cultural journey" brought the Ancient Tea Horse Road back to reality from the history textbook through the brothers' group carrying loads through the rainforest, learning the Pu'er tea withering process, and writing blessings in Dongba script. The scene in which Zhou Shen cried in front of the prayer wheel in the Dukezong Ancient Town in Shangri-La in the program has sparked heated discussions about "cultural empathy". Data shows that after the program was broadcast, the search volume for "Ancient Tea Horse Road Tourism" soared by 230%. Yunnan's cultural and tourism department took the opportunity to launch a special route "Follow the Running Man to Tour the Ancient Road", covering 12 core attractions such as Pu'er Tea Horse Ancient Town, Dali Weishan Ancient Street, and Lijiang Baisha Ancient Town.
The Hengduan Mountains, the core area of the Ancient Tea Horse Road, can be called the "Earth Fold Belt". This geological wonder formed by the collision of the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate has created a vertical climate zone of "four seasons in one mountain and different weather every ten miles". When the caravan sets out from the ancient tea mountain at an altitude of 1,300 meters in Pu'er and crosses the Nushan Mountains at an altitude of 5,500 meters, they can experience the ecological transition from tropical monsoon forests, subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests, cold temperate coniferous forests to alpine meadows along the way. This geographical diversity has nurtured the multicultural symbiosis of more than 20 ethnic groups such as Tibetans, Yi, Bai, and Naxi, forming a cultural landscape of "different customs every five miles and different sounds every ten miles".
- The national strategy of the tea-horse trade: The Song Dynasty established the Tea-Horse Department, which exchanged Sichuan and Yunnan tea for good horses from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, forming a national defense system of "using tea to control the border". According to the "Song History·Food and Goods Records", in the seventh year of Xining (1074), 100,000 kilograms of tea were exchanged for 2,000 horses.
- The economic wonder of the return of silver: In the Ming Dynasty, Pu'er tea entered India through the ancient Tea-Horse Road and was re-exported to Europe, triggering a craze for "Oriental leaves". In 1660, the price of tea in London coffee houses reached 6-10 pounds per pound, equivalent to half a year's salary for ordinary workers.
- The bloody memory of the lifeline of the Anti-Japanese War: After the Yunnan-Burma Road was interrupted in 1942, the "Air Horse Caravan" composed of 30,000 mules and horses transported 5,000 tons of strategic materials to Chongqing every month, of which 70% were transported via the Ancient Tea-Horse Road.
- Living fossil of language: The "Horse Caravan Chinese" on the Yunnan-Tibet Line integrates Tibetan, Bai and Naxi words, such as "rest" is called "Zaxi Deler" (Tibetan), and "eat" is called "Daifan" (Bai).
- Religious symbiosis: Lijiang Wenfeng Temple (Han Buddhism), Diqing Songzanlin Temple (Tibetan Buddhism), Dali Chongsheng Temple (Nanzhao Buddhism) form a "three religions coexisting" pattern along the Ancient Tea Horse Road.
- Skill transmission: Dongba papermaking of the Naxi "Three Flowers Festival", slow wheel pottery making skills of the Dai people, and Tibetan thangka painting are all passed down across regions through horse caravans.
- 5G Smart Tea Garden: Yunnan Telecom deployed 2,000 IoT sensors in Jingmai Mountain to monitor soil moisture, light intensity, and pests and diseases in real time, improving tea quality by 19% and reducing labor costs by 35%.
- Blockchain traceability: SF Express's "Digital Caravan" system generates a unique "digital ID card" for each cake of Pu'er tea. Consumers can scan the code to view the entire chain of information from planting to warehousing, with an error rate of less than 5%.
- Metaverse Tea Travel: Alibaba launched the "Tea Horse Ancient Road Metaverse", where users can experience the scenes of the caravan crossing the Lancang River and staying in the ancient town of Shaxi through VR equipment, with an average daily visit volume of over 100,000.
- Intangible cultural heritage revitalization: Pu'er Nakoli Station introduces experience projects such as Pu'er tea making and horse-assisted cooking. Visitors can press tea cakes by themselves and taste traditional delicacies such as "horse rolls".
- Red cultural tourism: Ning'er County National Unity Park, Jinggu County Bi'an Red Education Base and other attractions combine the history of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road with patriotism education, and receive more than 200 research teams each year.
- International cooperation: China and Laos jointly held the "Ancient Tea-Horse Road Cultural Week", Lao students learned Pu'er tea making skills in Pu'er, and Yunnan intangible cultural heritage inheritors went to Luang Prabang to demonstrate Dongba papermaking.
- Zero-carbon transportation experiment: Yunnan tea companies piloted the "photovoltaic caravan", installing solar panels on mule and horse packing to power IoT devices along the way, reducing traditional energy consumption by 30%.
- Biodegradable packaging: Malaysia's "Green Tea Bag Project" uses edible glutinous rice paper to package tea, reducing the use of plastic by 2,000 tons per year. This technology has been introduced to Yunnan tea companies.
- Ecological compensation mechanism: Pu'er established the "Ancient Tea Horse Road Ecological Fund", extracting 1 yuan from each cake of tea sold to repair the ecologically fragile zone in the Hengduan Mountain area, with a total investment of more than 200 million yuan.
When the guests of "Running Man" learned tie-dyeing techniques in the ancient city of Dali, they may not have realized that this blue and white fabric pattern was introduced to Tubo through the Ancient Tea Horse Road as early as the Tang Dynasty and became an important element of Tibetan clothing. As Mu Jihong, director of the Institute of Ancient Tea Horse Road Culture at Yunnan University, said: "The Ancient Tea Horse Road is not only a trade channel, but also a laboratory for dialogue between civilizations." This dialogue takes on a new form in the digital age:
- Symbiotic wisdom: The vertical ecosystem of "forest-tea forest-village" in the ancient tea forest of Jingmai Mountain provides a Chinese solution for the protection of global agricultural cultural heritage.
- Sharing economy: Blockchain technology enables tea profits to return from middlemen to tea farmers, and the average annual income of tea farmers in Jingmai Mountain has increased by 40%.
- Co-integration practice: The "Sending the King's Boat" ceremony and lion dance culture jointly declared by China and Malaysia have become world heritage shared by the two countries, and the "Digital Caravan" project is bringing "Caravan Love Song" to the metaverse stage.
From the cultural experience of the "Running Man" brothers group to the successful application of the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest for World Heritage; from the technological empowerment of the 5G tea garden to the innovative practice of Metaverse Tea Travel, the Ancient Tea Horse Road is writing a new legend. This civilization corridor that has spanned thousands of years is not only a memory of history, but also a key to the future - it tells us that the inheritance of civilization is not in the glass cabinets of museums, but in the warmth of tea farmers' fingertips, in the flow of digital codes, and in the exploration of a shared destiny for mankind.
【Research results cited】
- 《茶马古道：世界屋脊上的文明见证》—— 全国哲学社会科学工作办公室，2022 年
- 《5G 智慧茶园 + 云上智慧工厂项目报告》—— 中国电信云南公司，2023 年
- 《马东铁项目经济效益评估》—— 中国交通建设集团，2024 年
- 《数字技术对茶马古道文化遗产活化的影响研究》—— 云南大学，2025 年
- 《中马绿色能源合作白皮书》—— 中国电建集团，2024 年
- 《区块链技术在茶叶溯源中的应用》—— 顺丰速运研究院，2025 年
- 《"茶马古道文化大观园" 建设规划》—— 普洱市人民政府，2024 年
- 《景迈山古茶林文化景观申遗报告》—— 国家文物局，2023 年
