Xingping's old town occupies a compact area near the river wharf, where stone lanes run between buildings that date to the Ming and Qing dynasties. The scale is small — you can walk the whole preserved area in under an hour — but the atmosphere is distinct from the more tourist-processed towns further along the Li River. The lanes are residential as well as commercial; people live here and dry laundry in the same alleys that tourists walk through.
The old town is most interesting in the early morning before the day-trip crowds arrive from Yangshuo and Guilin. The light is better then anyway, and the teahouses and noodle stalls on the main street are operating, giving the place the texture of a functioning town rather than a preserved exhibit. The wharf at the east end of the main street is where the bamboo rafts and small boats moor; watching the fishermen set out before dawn is worth an early alarm.