The Tea Road

The Tea Road is a long-distance trade route between ancient China, Mongolia and Russia with tea as the main commodity. It is another important international business route that rose in Eurasia after the decline of the Silk Road.

From Wuyishan City in Fujian Province, China, the Tea road passes through Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Shanxi, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, then goes from Erenhot into Mongolia, along the Altai military platform, through the desert, via Ulaanbaatar and finally reaches Kyakhta,the Sino-Russian border treaty port. The whole journey is about 4760 km, including 1480 km by water and 3280 km by land. The Tea Road continues to extend in Russia, through Kyakhta, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Moscow, St. Petersburg and other dozens of cities. It then extended to other countries in Central Asia and Europe, making the total length more than 13,000 kilometers. It connected the core areas of agricultural civilization and steppe nomadic civilization in the north and south of the Asian continent, and extended to Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Tea Road can be compared with the Silk Road in terms of the large number of people involved, the wide range of regions traveled, the large volume and price of commodity trade, and the deep influence on history and culture.

On September 10, 2013, China, Mongolia and Russia signed the Document of Joint Application for the World Heritage of the Tea Road.

On March 22, 2019, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China officially agreed to include “The Tea Road” in the Preparatory List of China’s World Cultural Heritage.