Yulong River

The Yulong River flows parallel to the Li River through a valley of rice paddies and bamboo groves, and it is the place to get close to the karst landscape at human pace rather than from a tour boat. Bamboo rafts operate from Yulong Bridge, drifting downstream past the weirs and farmland with the limestone peaks framing the view above. The journey is gentle, practical, and genuinely beautiful.

You can cover the river by raft, bicycle, or a combination. Cycling the bank road from Yangshuo to Baisha and back follows the river through the valley with views across the water to the peaks on the opposite side. The section between Yulong Bridge and Gongnong Bridge — about 15 kilometres — concentrates the best scenery and is easily done in a morning. If you want to combine both, rent a bicycle in Yangshuo, ride out to Yulong Bridge, leave the bicycle, take a raft downstream, and arrange pickup at the endpoint.

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The Yulong River has 28 weirs along its 43-kilometre length, built over centuries to control water flow for irrigation. The bamboo raft journey from Yulong Bridge to Gongnong Bridge passes over most of them — the rafts slide down each weir drop in a brief rush of white water, and the polers navigate with long poles in water that is rarely more than a metre deep. The technique has been used on this river for at least three hundred years, and the poles have worn grooves into the weir stone that are visible when the water is clear.

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