"Ancient Tea Horse Road"--On the Creation of Packaging

In the alpine valleys of the Hengduan Mountains, among the jungle and grasslands of the “triangular” zone of the Yunnan, Tibet, and Sichuan, there is a mystical ancient road. The stone slabs of the ancient road are still embedded with two inches of deep horseshoe prints. They want to talk about the dust and dust; the stone walls beside the road are engraved with many Buddhist rumors and cliff paintings, and have gone through many vicissitudes. It is said that some iron bridges linking ancient roads were built by the gangsters. In the caves of the deep mountains, under the steep rocks, the dense white bones can be seen from time to time. The seventy-year-old old man drank ghee tea and told the younger generation the story of the distant tea that had nowhere in it. The ancient road is like a crease on the land of Yunnan. When people smooth it, it was discovered that there was a human cultural record of a thousand years.

According to historical records, the ancient Tea-Horse Road has already begun to take shape in the Western Han Dynasty. At that time, it was known as the "Tao (Sichuan) body poison (India) Road." In the year 138 BC, Zhang Jian made a visit to the Western Regions in the name of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He knew that there was a trade route leading from Yunnan and Sichuan to drug abuse (India).

In the Tang Dynasty, with the rise of the Tubo Kingdom, Princess Wencheng introduced tea to Tibet, making Tibetans and South Asians and West Asians drink tea in large quantities. However, because of the geographical environment, it was impossible to grow tea. Therefore, they had to use horses, herbs, furs and other plateau specialties to exchange tea for the Central Plains. The ancient road has restored its embarrassment. After a long time, it has formed a "tea-horse trade," and the trade with tea as a carrier has gradually developed. The Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties greatly strengthened this path, and thus formed the ancient Tea and Horse Road, one of the world’s highest terrain and the most complex cultural and cultural road in the Asian continent. It is the only ancient civilized road in the Asian continent that is still operating.

The fate of the “Tea and Tea Ancient Trail” originated from my habit of reading before going to bed, reading the fingers at random, and inadvertently seeing the above-mentioned words. I only remembered from a book about the “Ancient Tea Horse Road,” the specific title of the book. It is not clear now. What remains unchanged is that the touching and shock have remained in the bottom of my heart. It is also this touching and shock that brought me step by step to the “tea and horse ancient road”. There will be even later packaging entries.

With further understanding of the ancient road, I feel that the greatest feature of the ancient Tea Horse Road is its long history and proliferation. Because of this proliferation, the connotation of the ancient Tea Horse Road in time and space is very grand. When so much information and moving came to me, I felt overwhelmed at some time, as if I had fallen into a whirlpool that studied the culture of ancient paths. It seems that from any point you can cut into the search for material to further in-depth design, but it seems that it is not appropriate, and it cannot completely cover the culture and spirit of the ancient Tea Horse Road.

Fortunately, good mentors and many enthusiastic friends around me have helped me to return to Chinese traditional graphic applications and the most simple and straightforward graphic expressions. The visual information refers to the ancient road itself: maps of ancient roads, ancient carriages, and inscriptions on ancient stone walls....

The box shape of the box uses the traditional Chinese world cover structure, like the ancient official hat. The graphic of the unit consists of an inscription on the carriage of the Han Dynasty carriage and an inscription on the ancient road. The graphic arrangement is connected upside down and backwards, which reflects both the interactive interaction and the reversed Chinese philosophy of Taiji, and also reflects the characteristics of tea itself.

I believe that with the rise of the ancient road research, there will be more and more designers pay attention to this cultural civilization to spread the ancient road - Tea Horse Road. Then all my entries will be a good idea!

——Faculty of Art and Design, Shanghai University of Engineering Technology