The Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the
Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in
2023 as the world's first tea-themed cultural landscape, meeting criteria (iii)
and (v). Forged over a millennium by Blang and Dai communities through
traditional understorey cultivation, tripartite governance, and Tea Ancestor
worship, this organically evolved landscape embodies a living heritage system
where material and intangible elements are mutually constitutive. However, existing
scholarship tends to fragment material heritage (ancient tea forests and
settlements) from intangible heritage (traditional tea processing techniques
and associated social practices), failing to adequately address UNESCO's core
imperatives of living transmission, community participation, and sustainable
utilization. Drawing upon UNESCO's official heritage description, ICOMOS
evaluation reports, and systematic field investigations, this study adopts a dual-heritage linkage
perspective to analyze the sustainability challenges facing Jingmai Mountain.
It systematically examines the landscape's core constituents, the spatial logic
and architectural semiotics of Blang and Dai villages, and its Outstanding
Universal Value (OUV) as both a testament to cultural tradition and an exemplar
of sustainable land-use. Furthermore, it situates Jingmai within the historical
networks of the Southwest Silk Road and the Ancient Tea Horse Road, arguing
that the landscape functioned not merely as a node of commodity exchange but as
a corridor for cross-cultural transmission of agro-ecological knowledge and
spiritual beliefs. Finally, it proposes a five-pillar sustainable development
framework—ecological conservation, living transmission, community
co-governance, industrial synergy, and smart monitoring—to advance the
theoretical integration of tangible and intangible heritage safeguarding. The
findings offer an empirical reference for the conservation of living cultural
landscapes globally.
