Guilin's Karst Mountains: Cruising the Li River Through a Chinese Painting

The karst landscape of Guilin and Yangshuo in Guangxi province is one of the most recognisable in the world — a forest of limestone peaks rising abruptly from flat river plains, their reflections doubling in the slow green water of the Li River below. These formations were created over 300 million years as slightly acidic rainwater dissolved the limestone bedrock, leaving behind the hardest rock as isolated towers and pinnacles. The result is a landscape that looks more like a classical Chinese ink painting than anything that could exist in nature.

The Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo covers 83 kilometres and takes four to five hours by boat, passing through the most spectacular section of the karst landscape. The peaks have names — the Elephant Trunk Hill, the Nine Horses Fresco Hill, the Yellow Cloth Shoal — and each bend in the river reveals a new composition of water, rock, and mist. On overcast mornings, when low cloud wraps the upper peaks and the river surface is perfectly still, the scene is indistinguishable from the landscape paintings that have been produced in this region for a thousand years.

Yangshuo, at the southern end of the cruise, has grown from a quiet village into a lively town popular with backpackers and cyclists, but the surrounding countryside remains largely unchanged. Renting a bicycle and riding through the rice paddies and bamboo groves between the karst peaks is one of the great pleasures of the region — the roads are flat, the scenery is extraordinary, and every few kilometres brings a new village or viewpoint. The Moon Hill, a limestone arch visible from the road south of Yangshuo, is a short but steep hike with panoramic views over the valley.

Cormorant fishing on the Li River is one of Guilin's most photographed traditions — fishermen on bamboo rafts use trained cormorants to catch fish, with a ring around the bird's neck preventing it from swallowing the larger catches. While the practice is now largely performed for tourists rather than as a primary livelihood, the evening light shows on the river — with the fishermen silhouetted against the karst peaks and their lanterns reflected in the water — are genuinely beautiful.

The town of Xingping, midway along the Li River cruise, is worth a stop for its preserved Ming and Qing dynasty architecture and its position opposite the peak that appears on the 20-yuan note. The old street is lined with traditional wooden buildings housing tea houses and small restaurants, and the viewpoint above the town offers the classic composition of river, peaks, and bamboo that has defined the image of Guilin for generations.

The best time to visit is from April to October, when the river is high enough for the cruise boats to operate and the vegetation is at its most lush. The spring months of April and May bring mist and soft light that enhance the ink-painting quality of the landscape; the summer months are hot and humid but the rice paddies are brilliantly green. Avoid the Chinese national holidays in October, when the region receives enormous domestic tourist numbers and accommodation prices spike.

Beyond the Li River, the broader Guilin region contains several other karst landscapes worth exploring. The Longji Rice Terraces, two hours north of Guilin, cascade down the hillsides in layers that have been cultivated by the Zhuang and Yao minority peoples for seven centuries. The Dragon's Backbone terraces are at their most spectacular in late September and October, when the rice is golden before harvest, and the minority villages along the ridge offer homestay accommodation with views over the terraced valleys.