Located about 140 kilometers southwest of Chengdu, Ya’an is a historic gateway to Tibet and an important city on Sichuan-Tibet Highway (G318). The disastrous earth-quake on April 20 in Ya’an brought the city into the sight of world’s public.
Located almost halfway along National Highway G318 that stretches 5,476 kilometres from Shanghai, through Lhasa and to the border of Nepal, Ya’an is a significant city for travelers travelling to Tibet by overland from Chengdu to Tibet.
Nestled among mountains on the fringes of the Sichuan Basis, Ya’an is a beautiful city surrounded by grand peaks and clean rivers. It has a long association with the tea trade and even produced the world's most expensive variety of the commodity last year. While the Sichuan-Tibet highway is new, it follows a route forged more than 2,000 years ago. Ya’an marks the starting point of the Sichuan to Tibet leg of the ancient Tea Horse Road, a network of mule-caravan paths, along which tea from as far away as Yunnan was carried to Nepal and beyond, in exchange for horses.
Map of highway to Tibet from Chengdu
In ancient times, a horse traded for about 50kg of tea, but as demand and quality improved during the Song dynasty (960-1,279 AD), a horse could be bought for just 20kg of tea.
Yaan is also a synonymous with pandas, and first appeared in historical records as the place where this elusive outlying member of the bear family was first sighted, in Baoxing county.
The local Bifengxia Panda Base is a breeding facility that houses several world famous pandas. They include the US-born Hua Mei and Mei Sheng, who were relocated to Bifengxia after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake seriously damaged another breeding centre at the Wolong National Nature Reserve.
Tai Shan, who was born at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC, moved to Bifengxia in 2010.
In a novel twist, Yaan brought its two famous icons together to produce the world's most expensive and unusual tea.
It turns out that panda droppings make particularly good fertiliser for tea plants (Camellia sinensis). Growers say the tea is healthy because pandas absorb just 30 per cent of the nutrients from their diet of wild bamboo, and pass on the remaining 70 per cent to plants via the high-quality organic compost. Last year, panda tea set a world record, selling for US$3,500 for just 50 grams.
Yaan is the birthplace of panda.
With nearly 1,700mm of rain a year, Yaan is also known as the "Rain City". It enjoys a monsoon-fed, humid subtropical climate, while mountain ranges to the northwest shield it from cold Siberian winds.
The city of 1.5 million residents is notable for its climate, fish and - it is claimed - its women. Locals catch a fish belonging to the carp family and cook it in a casserole, saying it is the best way to bring out its freshness. They say the women inherit the best features of the region's 29 ethnic groups, including Han Chinese and Tibetans. Of course, the climate and the fish only contribute to their beauty.
As the gateway from Sichuan and Yunnan to Tibet, Yaan witnesses numerous tourists to Tibet each year. Some of them travel to Tibet by bike, some by self-driving, while some by hitchhiking. 99% of the travelers would stop at Yaan for overnight or lunch.
The section of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway is damaged by the landslide caused by the April 20 Earthquake in Ya'an and it is not advisable to travel to Tibet by self-driving along the Sichuan-Tibet Highway. Tourists can travel to Tibet by overland through Qinghai-Tibet Highway instead, or travel to Lhasa by train or by air.
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