Back in the mid-1980s, when China seemed to tolerate rather than welcome backpackers, there were a couple of places that bucked the trend. One of them was Yángshuò in the south’s Guangxi Province. It was beautiful, friendly, fun and cheap; it was rural, too, and so gave an experience away from sprawling cities and formal cultural sites; it still is.
Yángshuò, or ‘bright moon’, has matured now but, on the whole, those qualities that made it so attractive in the first place remain. More than anything, it is no longer the preserve of young Western travellers. Chinese tourists flock here, too (as they do to all of China’s sights these days), yet it’s still easy to strike off into virtually pristine countryside and enjoy the fine scenery.
Yángshuò sits by the Li River, about 60km from Guilin. It is the river’s marvellous karst scenery – steep limestone hills eroded into sheer, rounded humps – that has for centuries been the subject of Chinese poems and paintings. For many tour groups, Guilin city has become the focus of their visit. There are enough striking hills with evocative, if not perplexing, names – try Folded Silk Streamers Hill or Wave-Subduing Hill – as well as illuminated caverns like Reed Flute Cave and Returned Pearl Cave to fill a couple of days before the almost mandatory Li River day trip.
Yet Yángshuò, a small town with pedestrianised streets, is a far nicer place to stay. It also has its own assortment of strange- looking hills, while in the immediate vicinity lie virtually untouched villages and river valleys accessible by bike or even inflated tyre tubes.
Dominated by Green Lotus Peak, there are no sights here stunning enough to distract one from shopping and eating. Clothes, tailors, cheap CDs, fake antiques and kitsch souvenirs all compete for your wallet, and competition means prices are keen.
It’s the same with the restaurants and cafés, which offer alfresco meals on cobbled streets, probably the closest China gets to a Mediterranean outlook. They almost all rustle up great food – both Chinese and Western – and even the espressos are usually made on silver Italian stovetop jugs (though the beans are mostly from nearby Yunnan Province). You’re just as likely to find yourself sitting beside a group of beery Chinese as sedate middle-aged tourists and backpackers on epic trans-Asia trips.
But sooner or later, most travellers want to explore Yángshuò’s stunning hinterland and, considering what’s on offer, they’d be mad not to. Look beyond the town’s mainly whitewashed houses with their grey-tiled roofs and those distinctive hills dominate the skyline. You could ride a bike or even float down the Li River to the nearby village of Fuli. There’s a market here every few days and the place resembles what Yángshuò used to be like before being discovered by tourism.
Nor, despite the sheer numbers of tour groups, is there any denying the beauty of the Li River between here and Guilin. Most river cruises start at the latter and steep prices plus a long day on the boat (covering up to 80km depending on the embarkation point) don’t suit everyone. You might be able to do just a section of the river, perhaps starting or finishing at Xingping, but arbitrary and petty regulations mean this isn’t always possible.
I opted for the Yulong River and valley, a smaller tributary easily accessible by bike (or bus) and starting just 5km from town. It’s hardly unknown, but groups rarely come here. Within minutes of heading up a little path beside the gently flowing river, it was clear we had entered a far more rural, old-fashioned China.
Scattered hamlets sported duck-ponds where buffalo cooled off in the humid summer heat. Rice paddies stretched to the base of yet more weirdly-shaped hills, and in some the harvest had already begun. Villagers fed wooden threshing machines by hand while men rotated the blades by working pedals with their feet.
In one village, an elderly woman beckoned us in to view her home. Like most traditional houses, it comprised a series of rooms built around a small courtyard. Posters depicting the Four Guardians hung from the inside panels of her gate while fat red lanterns hung from her porch. There are some very quaint bridges in this area, too, especially the 15th-century Dragon Bridge and humped Shangui Bridge.
We’d already walked about 10km and fancied an alternative return. As if on cue, boatmen appeared, paddling long comical-looking rafts. They looked as rickety as they were rustic, with bamboo poles lashed together and a pair of chairs placed near the stern. Water gently washed over them, but they say bamboo is incredibly strong and I’m a reasonable swimmer.
So off we went, silently paddling downstream in a valley that now seemed even more sublime. At a couple of weirs we lurched forward momentarily, and one or two rafts became temporarily jammed. For passengers and boatmen, this was one big laugh. And quite unforgettable.
