Li River Cruise

The classic four-hour boat journey through karst peaks to Yangshuo

The Li River cruise is the centrepiece of any visit to Guilin. Boats leave from Zhujiang Pier (about 25 km south of the city, reached by bus or taxi) and travel 83 km downriver to Yangshuo over four to six hours, passing through the finest of the karst scenery. The route takes in peaks with names like Crown Cave, Nine Horse Fresco Hill, and Yellow Cloth Shoal — a flat sandbar where the reflections of the mountains in the river are so perfect you can barely tell which way is up.

Official cruise boats are large and comfortable with restaurants on board. Budget travellers sometimes take the public ferry, which is slower and cheaper. Arriving in Yangshuo and making your own way back (by bus or hired bicycle) is the better plan — it leaves you time to explore the town and the surrounding countryside rather than being herded straight back to Guilin.

things to do sight
A story
The stretch of the Li River between Guilin and Yangshuo is the most painted, photographed, and reproduced landscape in China. The 20-yuan note has featured it since 1980. When the painter Wang Anshi said this landscape "could not be captured in paint," he was making the opposite point: the mountains really do look like a brushstroke painting, and no painter who tried to render them accurately was ever believed.