Guilin & Yangshuo 桂林·阳朔

This is the landscape you have already seen in Chinese painting: vertical green towers of limestone rising straight out of flat rice fields, a river winding between them, water buffalo, fishermen on bamboo rafts. It is 400 km of karst country in north-east Guangxi, and the two bases are Guilin (the city, and the airport) and Yangshuo (the small town 65 km downriver, where you should actually stay). The classic trip is a Li River cruise down and three days of cycling, rafting and climbing around Yangshuo.

• Region South China
• Suggested stay 3 days
• Best season April–May and September–October
• Getting there Guilin Liangjiang airport (KWL) + high-speed rail: 3 h from Guangzhou, 11 h from Beijing

Guilin sits in the north-east of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on the Li River, in a basin of eroded limestone — “karst” — formed over 300 million years of tropical sea bed being dissolved by rain. The peaks are what is left.Getting there: Guilin Liangjiang (KWL) airport, 30 km out; high-speed rail at Guilin North / Guilin West (3 h from Guangzhou, 11 h from Beijing, 2.5 h from Nanning). Yangshuo has its own station on the same line — you can skip Guilin city entirely and go straight there from Guangzhou or Guilin.

• The Li River cruise — Guilin to Yangshuo, 4 hours, the classic. Book the boat, not the bus-and-boat package; sit on the top deck; the ¥20 banknote viewpoint is at Xingping.
• Xingping — the oldest town on the river and the prettiest stretch of it. A bamboo raft here beats the big boat for atmosphere.
• Cycling the Yulong valley — flat, quiet, between rice fields and karst; rent a bike or e-scooter in Yangshuo (¥30–60/day).
• Longji rice terraces — 2 h north of Guilin, “the dragon’s backbone”: hilltop villages with terraces that fill with water in May and turn gold in September. Stay overnight.
• Moon Hill andthe climbing crags — Yangshuo is the sport-climbing capital of Asia.
• Impression Liu Sanjie — a light-and-sound show staged on the river itself, directed by Zhang Yimou, with 600 local performers.

The area was incorporated into the Qin empire in 214 BCE and the Lingqu Canal, dug at the same time, connected the Yangtze and Pearl River systems — which is why this corner of the empire mattered. Guilin became a provincial capital under the Ming. The region is not Han Chinese by origin: it is the home of theZhuang, China’s largest ethnic minority (about 18 million), and of theYao, who live in the hills around Longji and are known for indigo-dyed clothing and extraordinary hair-wrapping traditions. The Zhuang’s antiphonal folk singing — the inspiration for the Liu Sanjie legend — is the intangible-cultural-heritage claim of the whole region.

Villages here are still farming villages: water buffalo in the fields, drying persimmons on rooftops, cormorant fishermen (now mostly for photographs, but real skills), and elderly women in Yao dress at Longji whose hair is wound into metre-long coils. Zhuang and Yao festivals follow the farming calendar — theSanyuesan singing festival in the third lunar month is the big one. The traveller economy of Yangshuo has been running since the 1980s, so locals are thoroughly used to foreigners and the hard sell is mild by Chinese standards. Learn “bye ndee” (hello) in Zhuang and people will be delighted.

Guangxi food is lighter than Sichuan, sourer than Cantonese:Guilin rice noodles (mifen) for breakfast — the local obsession, eaten dry with pickled beans and a ladle of broth;Li River beer fish (Yangshuo’s signature, grilled then stewed in beer and tomato);stuffed snails (tianluo);bamboo-tube rice;oil tea (a savoury, slightly bitter tea with puffed rice, drunk by the Yao); andgrapefruit andpersimmon in autumn. Take home:Guilin sanhua jiu liquor,osmanthus cakes,dried persimmon,Luohan fruit (monk fruit).

Allow 3 days. Day 1: Li River cruise, arrive Yangshuo, evening on West Street. Day 2: cycle the Yulong valley and Xingping, bamboo raft, cormorant fishing at dusk. Day 3: Moon Hill, the caves, or a bus to Longji for an overnight.Timing: April–May (water in the terraces, green, warm) and September–October (golden terraces, clear). July–August is hot and the river can flood; winter is grey and cold-damp.Mistakes: staying in Guilin city instead of Yangshuo; doing the river as a day trip from Guilin with a coach tour; missing Longji.