Li River or Reed Flute Cave? Top 10 Things to Do in Guilin

Elephant Trunk Hill got its name because it looks like an elephant drinking water. It stands at the confluence of the Taohua River and the Lijiang River. The round opening under the trunk is called Water-Moon Cave, because at night the reflection of the moon can be seen through the arch, as if it were under the water and floating on it at the same time.

The Longji Rice Terraces, also called the Longsheng Rice Terraces, climb a mountainside in the town of Longji, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) from Guilin. The fields sit between 600 and 800 metres (2,000 and 2,600 ft) above sea level and were mostly built about 650 years ago. They are named for looking like a dragon's scales, with the summit as the dragon's backbone. When you go changes what you see: layers of water in spring, green rice shoots in summer, rice in autumn and frost in winter.

The Lingqu Canal, in Xing'an County near Guilin, is a 36.4-kilometre waterway that links the Xiang River with the Li River. Qin Shi Huang ordered it in 214 BC for his military campaigns, and Shi Lu designed it. It is the oldest contour canal in the world, and it opened a route between Northern China and the Pearl River Delta. The Lingqu Canal is one of the most well-preserved ancient projects in the world.

The Jingjiang Princes' Palace, also known as the Jingjiang Princes' City, sits in the inner city of Guilin next to Solitary Beauty Peak. It was built between 1372 and 1392, in the Ming dynasty, so it is older than the Forbidden City in Beijing. It was first the home of Zhu Shouqian, and 14 kings from 12 generations lived here over 257 years. Sun Yat-sen stayed here in 1921. Today the site belongs to Guangxi Normal University but is open to the public as a tourist attraction.

Zengpiyan Cave is a Neolithic cave site on the south-western fringes of Dushan Mountain in the Guilin region, and one of the most important Neolithic cave sites in China. It was discovered in 1969, and excavations began in 1973. People lived here between 10,000 and 5000 BC, using the 220 m² main cave as a dwelling, and the cave was also used for burials. Excavations found the remains of over 30 people and over 10,000 pieces of pottery, including some of China's oldest pottery, dated by Chinese archaeologists to 12,000 years BP. Zengpiyan became a monument of China in 2001.

A bamboo raft ride down the Yulong River is the thing to do here. Unlike the busy Li River, the Yulong has no motorized boat traffic and relies completely on bamboo rafts to ferry passengers downriver, a popular tourist activity that begins at the Yulong Bridge, a 400-year-old stone bridge. The river is a small tributary of the Li River and runs for over 35 kilometres (22 mi) through villages of Yangshuo County such as Litang, Chaolong, Yima and Gaotian. It is shallow, around 5 meters (16 ft) at its deepest.

Moon Hill, a few kilometres outside Yangshuo, is a karst hill with a wide, semicircular arch right through it. The climb to the arch is about 1000 steps and takes roughly 20 minutes; the summit takes longer. From the top there are broad panoramic views over the countryside. Moon Hill also has rock climbing routes, many of them pioneered by the American climber Todd Skinner in the 1990s, and a two-year climbing ban was lifted in 2019. Visitors pay an entrance fee.