You might ride right through Ya'an on your way deeper into the Himalayas toward Kangding, or perhaps farther away from the Tibetan Plateau toward Bifengxia, Mingshan or Chengdu and in the grand scheme of things (in this case traveling in Sichuan), that wouldn't be so tragic.
But if you do find yourself here for a day or two, maybe waiting for a morning bus to the above mentioned locations? then our job is to let you know what you can do.
First thing you should do is find a local fish hot pot restaurant and plan to eat dinner there. Ya'an is known for its delicious fish and their fish hot pot is always huge, always tasty and always memorable. The best place to find these restaurant is along the banks of one of the four rivers that fklow through abnd around this city -- including the might Yangtze River.
The riverside is also home to dozens of teahouses serving up th elocals region's high grade green tea, grown in nearby Minshan County, atop and around the famous Mengding Mountain. The green tea here is excellent, but the city is more famous for the hearty brick tea it exported into Tibet for hundreds of years.
Just off oif the highway coming from Chengdu, you will see a sculpture of the infamous coolie caravans that hauled tea along the famed Horse and Tea Trade route from China into Tibet. This sculpture is pretty much all that is left of that culture.
Ya'an is a common stopover for travelers coming to or out of Tibet, but you can also visit local attractions like Erlangshan, Bifengxia and Mengding Mountain.
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History
Ya'an was the Han side of the gate (Kangding being the Tibetan side) through which thousands of tea caravans trudged, bringing brick tea to the Tibetans and returning with silver and sometimes even a string of horses.
Dominion over this gate swung back and forth since the city's first mention more than 3000 years ago -- sometimes mountain tribes would descend from their snowy fastnesses and take the town among the hills and sometimes an Imperial army would march all the way out here, to the fringes of the empire, and retake this vital trade hub.
The first Europeans to see pandas saw them here, in Baoxing County a couple of hours from modern Ya'an and today pandas are housed at the Bifengxia Breeding Base, also just a couple hours away.
Some of the best green tea in the world is grown in the hills around Ya'an. Nearby Mengdingshan has been cultivating tea for at least 1000 years and the Gan Lu and Shi Hua varieites of green tea produced here are favorites among tea gurus.
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Climate
Ya'an is known for the three yu: 雅鱼Yǎyú (Ya'an fish), 雅雨Yǎyǔ (Ya'an rain) and 雅玉Yǎyù (Ya'an jade).
The fish and jade aren't as plenmtiful as they once were (although Ya'an fish hotpot is still the BEST if you can get it by the river) but the rain hasn't gone anywhere. It rains a lot in the foothills of the Himalayas and that's whetre Ya'an perches, with tea mountains and bamboo forests in every direction.
The rains are heaviest in spring, but they return intermittently throughout the year. The summers are sunny (when it's not raining) and hot. The winters are overcast and chilly. And wet. Spring is wonderful, but wet. And fall is actually the driest, msot perfect time of the year for travelling in the region.
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