Five days in Guilin and Yangshuo: down the river on the back of the banknote

Guilin's own hills are the first afternoon. Elephant Trunk Hill sits where the Peach Blossom stream meets the Li, and a natural arch through the rock leaves a shape that has been the city's emblem for centuries.

The park charges to get close, and you can see it perfectly well from the bank opposite and from the walkway upstream, which is what most locals do.

Solitary Beauty Peak stands inside the old princes' compound, now a university campus, with a stone staircase to the summit. It is a hard ten minutes and the top gives you the geological joke all at once: a flat city with towers scattered through it.

In the evening the two central lakes are lit, with a pair of pagodas standing in the water, and the circuit takes about an hour.

This is limestone country and the caves are part of the point. Reed Flute is the big one, five kilometres northwest: a chamber of stalactites and columns lit in vivid colours that horrify purists and delight everybody else.

It has been visited for a very long time. There are inscriptions on the walls left by Tang dynasty travellers, which puts the tourism here at about twelve hundred years old.

Back in town, Fubo Hill rises sheer out of the riverbank and holds Tang Buddhist carvings in the caves at its foot, with steps up to a lookout over the river.

Seven Star Park across the river takes the rest of the day: a large green park built around karst outcrops, with a cave of its own and a small zoo where the giant pandas are.

The boats leave in the morning from the pier half an hour south of Guilin, and the first hour is unremarkable. Then the towers start.

The middle two hours, between Yangdi and Xingping, are the reason this trip exists. The river narrows, the peaks close in on both sides, and buffalo stand in the shallows in front of them. The bend from the banknote is announced by everybody on board at once.

Sit on the upper deck and get outside. The saloon has windows and the view from the rail is a completely different thing.

You land in Yangshuo in the middle of the afternoon. Drop the bags, hire a bicycle, and go and see West Street, which is loud and commercial and worth an hour before dinner.

This is the day people remember. The Yulong river runs into the Li a few kilometres from town, and the valley it comes down is flat, green, threaded with small lanes and completely surrounded by towers.

Hire a bicycle or an electric scooter in town and go. There is no route to follow: cross the old stone bridge, take whichever lane looks quieter, and stop when you want to. Bamboo rafts work the river all day and can be picked up at any of the landings.

Moon Hill is the anchor at the southern end, a limestone arch you can climb up to on eight hundred steps. It is a hard half hour in the heat and the view through the hole is the one on the postcards.

Take water and cash. There is very little of either out in the valley.

Xingping is twenty five kilometres upstream and it is the village on the twenty yuan note. Get there for first light, when the mist is still lying between the towers and the cormorant fishermen are out on the water.

The walk from the village along the bank towards the Nine Horses Fresco Hill takes an hour each way and is the best view of the river anywhere on it, including from the boat.

A local bus takes forty minutes from Yangshuo, or a scooter half an hour. Come back for lunch and you are in good time for an afternoon train.

Yangshuo's high speed station is thirty minutes out of town, and Guilin's airport about ninety.