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.

摘要

这是因为古代茶马古道的概念三十年（Chamagudao) (ATHR) 成立。随着时间的推移，它已经从一个学术概念发展成为西南地区茶叶和旅游业地名品牌的重要项目。作为一种流动性叙事，ATHR 讲述了西南地区的不同民族如何通过茶叶的生产、交流和消费形成集体身份的故事。自成立以来，ATHR 已经取得了进步，甚至挑战了南方丝绸之路曾经的主导地位。最近，它也被纳入“一带一路”倡议的议程。然而，虽然 ATHR 的奖学金增加了我们对西南地区的理解，但它仍然受制于民族主义史学，并没有实现其成为国际遗产奖学金界公认的跨国路线的雄心。