West Mountain rises behind Guiping city, its forested slopes dotted with Buddhist and Taoist temples that have been accumulating on these hillsides since the Tang dynasty. The mountain has been considered sacred for over a thousand years, and the temples — Longhua Temple, the white Guanyin pavilion, and several smaller shrines connected by paved paths — give the place a layered quality: centuries of religious construction visible at once, with the river and the karst landscape of central Guangxi visible beyond.
The tea gardens on the slopes produce Guiping Xishan tea, one of China's most famous green teas within the country and one of the least known abroad. You can buy it directly from producers near the mountain entrance, and the teahouses on the hillside paths provide somewhere to drink it in the appropriate setting. A cable car makes the summit accessible if the 30-minute climb seems excessive; the view from the top, over the confluence of the Xun and Qian rivers and the surrounding karst, is genuinely good. The Xishi Temple (also known as the Rock Temple) on the western face of the mountain is the most architecturally interesting of the hill's religious buildings, built directly into a limestone outcrop.