Guilin - 桂林 - Gui Lin

By water, by mountains
earth's fairest,
Guilin

Guilin is located in the North-east corner of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It lies on the main route between Changsha and Nanning and is therefore relatively well-served by rail and road. Given its importance as a tourist destination, it is becoming better connected with a new expressway to Wuzhou due to open soon. This will shorten driving times to the south, especially Guangzhou, considerably.

Guilin also has an international airport. This is located to the west of the city. Domestic flights go to many of China's larger cities on a daily basis. International flights are limited to Hong Kong, Macau and South-east Asia but this does at least provide for more interesting connections.

Guilin underwent major reconstruction at the turn of the millenium. Much of the city centre was raised to the ground in order to upgrade the basic infrastructure. There are other projects aimed at making the city more attractive. The largest of these - the Two Rivers and Four Lakes project - connects the major water ways within the city and provides public parks and gardens to complement the other natural beauty spots. A boat tour around the project and with some nice views is available.

Guilin is the start point for the famous Li River Cruise. Actually, this starts from docks to the south of town but, since the boats depart at 09:30 it is true that the only practical place to stay the night before is in Guilin.

Visitors to Guilin will probably also be interested in finding out about Yangshuo and the rice terraces at Longsheng.