Yan first garnered recognition for his acting in 1980, when his performance in The True Story of Ah Q earned him a Best Actor award at the 6th Hundred Flowers Awards, the Chinese equivalent of the Golden Globes, and received "The Gold Stick Prize" at the Second International Comedy Film Festival of Vevey, Switzerland in 1982.

Yan co-starred with Liu Falu, Jin Kangmin, Niu Hong, Chen Qi and Fang Qingzhuo in the 1983 film Spring in the Hometown as a lame person.

Yan appeared in the romance film The Female Director's Boyfriend (1986), in which he played Cui Hailong.

Yan filmed in Legend of the Book's Tower, a wuxia television series starring Sharla Cheung, Nicky Wu, Allen Lin, and Tiffany Tang.

In 2010, when he was 72, he starred as Wang Mugen, reuniting him with co-star Yvonne Yung, who played his daughter-in-law, in the television series My Ugly Dad.