It is just after 8am on a sunny Saturday morning and the Muse border post is buzzing. The line of Burmese waiting for permits to cross under the towering faux pagoda and into China for work is already dozens deep. Guards in olive green uniforms check the paperwork of a woman pushing a cart stacked high with boxes in the other direction. A long-haired Burmese hipster in a leather jacket passes through unmolested on a shiny new red Honda with low-rider handlebars. Then a pretty young Chinese woman, upright on a pink electric scooter with a blue parasol, glides through straight on to the ragged verge, narrowly avoiding the oncoming trucks which, stacked high with boxes of Chinese-made TVs and washing machines, kick up swirls of dust as they buck down the thoroughfare.

Watching it all is a clutch of Chinese tourists, eagerly taking pictures of the wild western frontier before them. And watching me watch them is Zaw Min Latt, a 42-year-old driver waiting for Chinese traders willing to pay for the $100 ride in his Toyota to Mandalay. Almost six feet tall and turned out in a cashmere sweater, Zaw Min Latt is an elegant man. He is also wary of those who give him most of his business. He nudges his head towards the Chinese group and mutters that they often sneak across without proper documentation and that Myanmar’s government doesn’t do enough to control the flow. The relationship is “not equal”, Zaw Min Latt complains. “It feels like we are losing. The Chinese hold the upper hand because they helped the old military government.” He pauses for a few seconds and adds: “They always hold the upper hand in business.”

There are busier borders in the world. But there are very few that in the great game of globalisation stand to undergo more profound change in the years to come. Scrappy Muse (pronounced Mew-say) and Ruili, its neon-lit Chinese neighbour, make up China’s busiest border with Myanmar. They are also a crucial link in an ancient trade route that is now being reborn in a way few of its past travellers could have imagined.