Sichuan's incredible diversity often boils down to two things for first-time visitors: pandas and peppers. Pretty much everyone knows that China's iconic animals amble through Sichuan's bamboo forests and that numbingly hot Sichuan pepper fuels one of the world's spiciest cuisines. What people don't always know—but quickly find out—is that Sichuan has far more to offer. In fact, it's one of China's richest zones of biodiversity—over one-fifth of the nation's rare plants and animals are to be found in Sichuan's mountains, river valleys and forests.

It's also a culturally diverse place, especially in its rugged western half, where Tibetan, Naxi, Qiang and Li ethnic minorities live amidst often stunning landscapes of wooded mountains and lakes. "Sichuan" translates to "four rivers," and its historical importance and present prosperity have much to do with the Yangzi and its tributaries, especially in the fertile east, where the ancient capital of Chengdu presides over economic boom times. The subtropical lowlands' rich soil has always made eastern Sichuan an agricultural dynamo; now, the province is also an industrial powerhouse, doing more than its part to contribute to China's overall breakneck growth. 

So, come to see the pandas at the Jiuzhaigou to the culturally iconic Emei Shan. Linger in Chengdu's classic teahouses and visit the ancient colossus of the Buddhist world, Dafo, in Leshan. Finally, think about moving on downriver on the Yangzi toward the Three Gorges or heading to two of China's other wilder regions, Tibet and Yunnan, lying to the west and south respectively. In the end, you'll likely understand why the Chinese call Sichuan "the Heavenly Kingdom." 

History

No longer is access to Sichuan from the eastern Han Chinese heartlands "harder than the road to heaven," as Tang era poet Li Bai put it, but the province retains the distinct cultural flavor that developed over centuries of relative remoteness from the power centers in Beijing, Nanjing and Xi'an. That's not to say Sichuan hasn't been an integral part of China's history—on the contrary, this resource-rich land's fertile river valleys and forests have long been a cherished prize for successive dynasties, starting with the Qin Dynasty (221-226 BC), whose conquest of "Heaven's Granary" helped fuel its drive to overwhelm its powerful rivals in eastern China, ending the Warring States period and forging the unified China that has served as the template for all subsequent ruling powers. 

Prior to the Qin conquest, Sichuan had long been occupied, with the Ba and Shu kingdoms uniting in the time of the Shang (1600-1100 BC) to form Bashu—a cultural base that still endures in many ways today. The Bashu successfully cultivated the eastern half of present-day Sichuan, making it a target first of the expansionist Qin and later of the rampaging Mongols under Ghengis Khan, who swept through in the 13th century. 

Much later, in the 20th Century, Sichuan's independent streak emerged in uprisings that quickly spread across China, leading to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911-1912. 25 warlord-plagued years later, Sichuan's remoteness made it the ideal base for the nationalist Kuomintang as they retreated from the ferocious advance of Japanese forces. In 1937, Chiang Kai-shek set up his wartime capital in Chongqing, the Yangzi metropolis which only recently—in 1997—split off from Sichuan to become one of China's four provincial-level municipalities. After four years of bloody civil war with Mao Zedong's communists, the Kuomintang once again found themselves holed up in Sichuan, where they made a final stand on the mainland before hop-scotching to Taiwan as the People's Liberation Army took over in 1949.

In the 1950s, Sichuan was brought to heel after several chaotic decades saw local warlords carve out quasi-independent fiefdoms; the '60s and '70s saw the area, so dependent on agriculture, suffer particularly hard as the PRC experimented with collective agriculture, mass industrialization and, of course, the painful re-education schemes of the Cultural Revolution.

After experiencing years of relative deprivation and impoverishment, Sichuan sprang to economic life with the reforms of native sons Zhao Ziyang and Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and '90s. Industry expanded rapidly—along with pollution, unfortunately—sparking astonishing growth, construction and wealth creation. Sichuan's prosperity, along with that of other regions of China, has made the province's relatively undeveloped mountainous western regions increasingly popular tourist destinations, as China's burgeoning middle class seeks its own Yosemite and Yellow Stone. Today, the region is attempting to strike a balance between development and conservation—a struggle epitomized by recent efforts to preserve the giant panda and its fragile bamboo forest homelands.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake, with its multiple epicenters in western Sichuan and over 12,000 deaths, adds a tragic chapter to recent Sichuan's history, though the quick national and international responses bring hope that a quick recovery will follow.

Climate

Located in a subtropical zone, Sichuan enjoys a unique climate due to the region's uncommon and varied topography and the influence of alternating weather patterns. Sichuan's eastern basin is characterized by a damp climate, while the Western Sichuan plateau and mountain areas have dryer climates depending on altitude, with some areas reaching heights of over 5000 meters.

Rainfall: In winter, Sichuan's climate is dry with little rainfall. Sichuan gets abundant rainfall from April to October, but in the west of the province, the rainy season is from May to September. Generally the eastern areas receive more rainfall than the western, and the basin areas gets more rain than the plateau regions.

Average Temperatures: Sichuan's four seasons are quite distinct. In spring, temperatures range from between 10 and 21.9 degrees C; In Summer, temperatures average above 22 degrees. Autumn temperatures vary between 10 and 21.9 degrees.

In winter, the average temperature is below 10 degrees centigrade. The Western Sichuan plateau areas are quite cool and have an average annual temperature of less than 8 degrees centigrade. The average temperature is 5 degrees below zero in January, 5 to 10 degrees in April, 10 to 15 degrees in June and 5 degrees in October. In fact, Western Sichuan has almost no summer.

Sichuan's southwestern mountainous regions have average annual temperatures of between 15 and 20 degrees in valley areas, and 5 and 15 degrees in mountain areas. In January, the average temperature is about 5 degrees Centigrade, 10 to 24 degrees in April, 15 to 26 degrees in June and 10 to 20 degrees in October.