Li River

The Li River is the landscape that Chinese painters and poets have been returning to for centuries, and the one printed on the back of the 20-yuan banknote. It rises in the Mao'er Mountains of Xing'an County in north-eastern Guangxi and flows 164 kilometres south through Guilin and Yangshuo to Pingle, where it joins other streams to become the Gui River. What makes it extraordinary is not the river itself but what stands along it: hundreds of isolated limestone towers, 30 to 80 metres high and in places far taller, rising straight out of flat paddy fields and bamboo groves on either bank.

Geologists call this tower karst. It formed from thick beds of Devonian and Carboniferous limestone, dissolved by the monsoon rains into a forest of steep-sided peaks separated by level ground, with caves such as Reed Flute Cave hollowed inside them. In 2014 the Guilin karst was added to the South China Karst World Heritage site. The classic stretch is the 83 kilometres between Guilin and Yangshuo, and its middle section is the finest: the cliff called Nine Horse Fresco Hill, whose mineral streaks are read as a herd of galloping horses, and Yellow Cloth Shoal, where on still mornings the peaks reflect in the water almost perfectly, the very scene engraved on the banknote. Nearby Xingping is an old river port with Ming- and Qing-era lanes.

Look out for the details that bring the scene to life: bamboo rafts poled between the shoals and fishermen who still work with trained cormorants, a practice long associated with the river. Upstream, north of Guilin, the Lingqu Canal, dug in 214 BC, is one of the oldest working canals in the world. Mist, which settles on the peaks in the wet months, turns the whole valley into the ink-wash painting it is famous for.

Getting there

Guilin is about 35 km from the heart of the scenic section, and Guilin Liangjiang International Airport (KWL) is about 57 km away. Cruises down the classic 83 km stretch start from Zhujiang or Mopanshan piers near Guilin and end at Yangshuo, taking about four to five hours. A shorter way to see the finest scenery is a bamboo raft between Yangdi and Xingping, about an hour and a half, which passes Nine Horse Fresco Hill and the 20-yuan view.