Guilin

Go out on deck and stay there. From inside, the frame keeps cutting the peaks in half. It is 83 kilometres from the pier south of Guilin to Yangshuo, about four hours. In low winter water the big boats cannot run it all and a raft takes the middle stretch.

The tributary runs slow and narrow, and a raft takes two people sitting. A boatman poles it along, and at every low weir the front tips up and drops with a slap of water. Stretches are sold separately, so pick where you get on and off before you pay.

The river bored a hole through the rock that reads as an elephant dipping its trunk — a view the embankment on the far bank gives free, without going into the park.

Terraces two hours north of Guilin. Flooded in May and June, every step holds the sky; from late September into October the crop turns gold. High summer between them is simply green. Two villages serve them: Zhuang at Ping'an, Yao at Dazhai, on separate roads.

Coloured lamps are set through the cave, so each formation comes up a different shade. The walking route is about 500 metres, one way. Under an hour sees it done, so it slots into a wet day.

One paved street holds the guesthouses, the bars and the hire shops, which is where you pick up a bicycle. It is quiet by day; once the speakers go on in the evening the noise stacks up and talking gets difficult.

The peak rises straight out of the town centre, twenty minutes of steps to the top. From up there the river's loop around the streets and the separate peaks standing out of the plain arrive in the same view.

Inside the Ming princely wall stands an entire peak, Solitary Beauty. A board puts the climb at 306 steps, and from the top the square of the wall reads clearly below. The grounds are a university campus now.

Two lakes and two rivers are joined into a circuit that a boat runs in one loop. The Sun and Moon pagodas at the water's edge are lit each night, while under the low bridges everyone aboard ducks without being asked.

The river bend on the reverse of the twenty-yuan note is the one in front of this village. Someone is always standing there holding the note up to line it against the hills. Laozhai Hill behind it is forty minutes up, for the U-turn of the river from above.

Near the peak a half-moon arch pierces the rock, shifting from full moon to crescent as your angle changes. By bike from Yangshuo it is 30-odd minutes, and a stone stairway climbs to the arch. The rock round the hole carries climbing routes.

A limestone cave less than an hour from Yangshuo by car, heading south for Lipu. Crystals in the formations glint silver under the lights, hence what it is called. The route tunnels through the mountain, so the exit is on the opposite side from the way in.

Named for seven peaks laid out like the Big Dipper. Camel Hill, humped like its namesake, is inside, and you enter over Flower Bridge, the stone span across the Xiaodong River. East of the centre, it is a walk across the Li River.

A Zhang Yimou open-air show since 2004, staged on the Li River at Yangshuo with twelve peaks lit behind and hundreds of performers on bamboo rafts. It starts after dark; light rain means ponchos, heavy rain cancels it.

An old market village on the Li River, some thirty minutes by car south-east of Guilin. A long stone street follows the river past Ming and Qing timber shopfronts, where residents still trade. The town charges no entry fee and is much calmer than Yangshuo.