Editor: Gao Qian

'Delamu', a new documentary by fifth generation film director Tian Zhuangzhuang, shows the lives and culture of people living on the remote border of Yunnan and Tibet and opened in cinemas last month in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

A beautiful account of the lives of people living along the old Nu River, the film took five years to shoot and is the first installment of the series the 'Southern Silk Road'. Delamu is the Tibetan word for peace and also the name given to a mule in the film.

Until modernity, China's connection to the outside world basically consisted of the more famous Silk Road to the north, and the southern Silk Road, or tea-horse trail as its known in Chinese. The latter was a dangerous route taken by horse caravans carrying tea, food, salt and other goods and has been in existence for around 2,000 years. The route took horse-caravans through cragged mountainous areas eastward into Tibet and even further to Nepal and India. While the northern Silk Road is the more famous of the two routes, in recent years the southern Silk Road has attracted more and more interest.