Guilin 桂林

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A gallery of urban waterways formed by the Li River, Peach Blossom River, and Shan, Rong, Gui, and Mulong Lakes; a night boat cruise threads through lakes and past bridges to take in all of Guilin

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Origin of the line 'Guilin's scenery is the finest under heaven'—Wang Zhenggong's Southern Song inscription stands on the Dushu Rock cliff of Solitary Beauty Peak, where the 600-year-old original stele remains

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Named for rock layers stacked like folds of brocade; from Wangjiang Pavilion on Mingyue Peak in the 'Diecai Qionglou' area you overlook the Li River and the whole city—one of the best viewpoints in town

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Known as the "Cave of State Guests," visited by heads of state and dignitaries from over 80 countries; opened in 1962 as Guilin's earliest developed show cave

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Guilin's largest comprehensive park, with Seven Star Hill laid out like the Big Dipper; Seven Star Cave (called Qixia Cave in the Sui and Tang dynasties) is a cave along the Li River's ancient channel, with visits traceable back a thousand years

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The highest peak in Guilin's urban area (909 m); cable car to the summit for views over Guilin and a great bend of the Li River; "Yaoshan Winter Snow" ranks among Guilin's Eight Ancient Scenic Views

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A Li River landscape live show directed by Zhang Yimou; premiered in 2004 as the world's first landscape live performance, with 600 performers enacting Liu Sanjie's songs and legends on the river through fishing lights, bamboo rafts, and hillside lighting

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A 1,400-year-old street, dubbed "Foreigners' Street" in the 1980s when foreign backpackers gathered here—one of China's earliest "global villages," with 150-plus Chinese and Western bars and restaurants lining the street

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Bamboo-raft drifting on the "Little Li River"; the stretch from Gongnong Bridge to Jinlong Bridge has clear water and gentle banks, with two Ming dynasty stone arch bridges, Fuli Bridge and Yulong Bridge, lying across the green water; rice paddies and cycling greenways on both banks are picture-perfect

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A scenic corridor along the G321 national highway in Yangshuo, lined with Totem Ancient Trail, Butterfly Spring, Big Banyan Tree (said to be where Liu Sanjie tossed her embroidered ball; about 1,400 years old) and Moon Hill (a natural stone arch known as "the bright moon emerging from the mountain")

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Starting point of the "most scenic stretch of the Li River" and the location pictured on the back of the CNY 20 banknote—the Yellow Cloth Shoal reflection, where visitors have fun snapping photos holding the note for comparison

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The most scenic stretch of water on the Li River, unfolding past Nine Horse Fresco Hill, Yellow Cloth Shoal and Langshi Village—this is the very stretch of river evoked in Han Yu's verse "The river is a green silk ribbon, the hills like emerald hairpins"

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An indoor show by Songcheng Performance in Yangshuo, where five acts—including the digging of the Lingqu Canal and the song fairy Liu Sanjie—trace 2,000 years of Guilin history; dense sound-and-light spectacle and unaffected by weather

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An epic of terraced fields with 650 years of cultivation, carved into the mountains by the Zhuang and Yao peoples—truly worthy of the title "crown of the world's terraced fields"

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The soul of the Danxia landform: the main peak's "Dragon's Spine" ridge straddles Hunan and Guangxi, offering the unique photo op of "one foot in two provinces"

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Commissioned by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in 214 BC, one of the world's oldest canals, linking the Yangtze and Pearl River systems, hailed as a "pearl of ancient world water-conservancy engineering"

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A nationally key protected heritage complex where Ming- and Qing-era Confucian and Martial temples coexist in one county; the Confucian Temple is a model of Lingnan county-level Confucian temples, the Martial Temple's Guan Yu Hall is grand and well-proportioned, and its civil-plus-military worship layout is rare nationwide

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A "world karst-cave wonder"; its calcite crystals glitter like silver, and under the lights the "Three Wonders and Nine Scenic Views" — Musical Stone Screen, Snow Mountain Flying Waterfall and more — feel like stepping into a treasure vault

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A fortune-and-longevity culture landmark of Yongfu, a "hometown of longevity in China"; Baishou Rock's cliff is carved with 100 variants of the character "shou" (longevity) — a double spectacle of calligraphy and folk custom

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A memorial to the Red Army's Xiangjiang Battle on the Long March; the saying "For three years no one drank the Xiang River's water, for ten years no one ate the Xiang River's fish" tells of the battle's brutality — the Jiaoshanpu blocking-battle site is right here