Anhua Tea Horse Road Scenic Area 茶马古道开放景区

About Anhua Tea Horse Road Scenic Area

Anhua's dark tea was made a tribute tea in 1391 and in the Wanli reign of the Ming was designated official tea, shipped to the Tea and Horse Agency in Shaanxi and Gansu to be bartered for horses on the frontier. To move it, tea merchants pooled money and built dedicated roads across the county, paved with bluestone slabs and provided with covered bridges, tea pavilions and hitching posts over hundreds of li. Because the tea then went on by water down the Zi River, the Anhua route is described as a boat-and-packsaddle system rather than a purely overland one. Tea here is older than the county itself: a Tang text of 856 already records Qujiang tea flakes as black as iron, while the county was created only in 1072.

The scenic area is divided into three units, the Guanshan Gorge, the Gaocheng cultural area and Chuanyan. Its best preserved asset is a flagstone path running several kilometres from Lianhuan village at the foot of the hill up to Gaocheng village; no motor road reached the village before tourism arrived, so packhorses stayed in use and the paving was maintained. Chuanyan still has the Antai covered bridge, the site of the Yongji tea pavilion and the Chuanyan tea prohibition stele.

The area is now a national AAAA-grade scenic area covering about 3.9 square kilometres, and much of what stands in it is recent. A street called Chajing Shanjie has been built to recreate the old tea and horse market, a 700 m miniature tea-horse road with a departure plaza and the Fenggongzhai node has been laid out in the Guanshan Gorge, and a themed water street closes that route. The genuine paved road and the Chuanyan relics are separate from these reconstructions.

What to look for

• The bluestone flagstone road from Lianhuan village up to Gaocheng village, the most complete surviving stretch
• The Antai covered bridge in the Chuanyan area
• The site of the Yongji tea pavilion, one of the rest points built along the old road
• The Chuanyan tea prohibition stele, a carved record of the tea trade
• The Guanshan Gorge unit, one of the scenic area's three parts, where a 700 m reconstructed tea-horse path has been built

Location & getting there

Getting to Anhua Tea Horse Road Scenic Area

Follow the currently permitted path and arrange the return before setting out. Do not infer trail continuity or difficulty from the route name alone.

• Search for 茶马古道开放景区 with 益阳市 and 安化县.