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China: Tea porters Muleteers crossing the Luding Bridge over the Dadu River in Luding County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, c.1939

The Tea Horse Road (Cha Ma Dao) was a network of mule caravan paths winding through the mountains of Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet in Southwest China. It is also sometimes referred to as the Southern Silk Road and Ancient Tea Horse Road. From around a thousand years ago, the Ancient Tea Route was a trade link from Yunnan, one of the first tea-producing regions, to India via Burma, to Tibet, and to central China via Sichuan Province.

In addition to tea, the mule caravans carried salt. It is believed that it was through this trading network that tea (typically tea bricks) first spread across China and Asia from its presumed origins in Pu'er county, near Simao Prefecture in Yunnan.

The Luding Bridge (Lúdìng Qiáo) is a bridge over the Dadu River in Luding County, Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China, located about 80 kilometers west of the city of Ya'an. The bridge dates from the Qing Dynasty and is considered a historical landmark. In 1935, during the Long March, soldiers of the Fourth Regiment of the Chinese Workers and Peasants' Army secured the bridge as a river crossing vital to the Red Army.