The Ultimate One Week Guide To Guilin, China

Situated in between Guilin and Yangshuo lies the cobblestone streets and surreal mountain scenery of Xingping. This ancient town has inspired countless Chinese traditional paintings and its picturesque landscapes even features on the 20RMB note.

When it comes to advenutre, Xingping is the place to be! It’s a perfect destination for a scooter adventure, with winding roads and the constant shift scenery shifts taking you towards towering scenic views. There’s no shortage of mountains to climb either, each showcasing a unique perspective of Xingping’s stunning scenery.

My favourites? Laozhai Mountain and Damian Mountain, but I’ll dive into those shortly. Oh, and for the photographers out there, you’ll consider this place to be a gold mine of opportunities, so make sure your camera’s are fully changed!

This well preserved ancient town with traditional architecture and blue brick tile houses is a great place to start your journey. Filled with a variety of restaurants, street food and souvenirs.

• Difficulty level: Moderate
• Elevation: 300m/948ft
• Estimated time: 15-20mins
• Entrance fee: Free
•  Opening times: 24 hours

Located in the heart of Xingping is Laozhai Mountain. It’s a short but extremely steep climb! My friend told me it would only take 15 minutes to reach the peak of the mountain, however the journey up mountain was defiantly more stressful than I anticipated.

You’ll first be greeted with a steep incline and rocky surfaces that’ll just keep getting rockier and steeper the further you traverse towards the top. Once your reach the peak, climb over the rocky surface besides you to see some of the best views in Xingping. I loved it so much I decided to climb up during the evening to witness a beautiful, picturesque sunset.

Before setting off to Damian Mountain and Xianggong Hill, you’ll need to know how to cross the river. You can travel to these mountains through a local tour company or you can drive there yourself with an electric scooter. I drove from Yangshuo, but there are plenty of scooter rental locations within Xingping, you can’t miss them!

Anyway, the ferry port in Xingping won’t allow you to take bikes on their boats, however you should go down to the smaller dock directly next to Laozhai Mountain which is operated by locals.

When I first approached the dock, they explained to me that I couldn’t drive scooters around the mountains because the elevation is too “high” and then proceeded to offer me their taxi service around instead. However, eventually they’ll let you take yourself and the bike across the river for 15RMB. Don’t worry! The surfaces are more than suitable for scooters.

The local ferry service ends early in the evening, so I’d recommend continuing through the mountains and return back to your accommodation to end your trip. However, if you do need to return to Xingping, I’m sure you’d be able to pay someone to take you back across the river.

• Difficulty level: Moderate/Hard
• Elevation: 329m/1076ft
• Estimated time: 30-45mins
• Entrance fee: 20RMB 
• Opening times: 24 hours

I loved everything about this mountain, from climbing the metal and rocky stair cases, taking a picture with a Chinese flag, and getting a 360 panoramic view of Xingping!

This mountain can be easily missed as there is no official sign. However, once you’ve followed the area highlighted in red on the map (see imagine below), look towards the Li River area and down below you’ll see a small workshop and a curved upward hill heading up the mountain.

Once you reach the top, from the west you will see the sunsetting beneath the mountains and from the east you can view the Li River and Xingping.

We met a couple of boys from Germany as we were descending down the mountain, and they told us they were planning to camp for the evening and wake up to a morning sunrise. I don’t blame them either! The stars were magnificent and lit up the night sky, one thing I regret not knowing was that you could camp on this mountain, I would have loved to experience a sunrise from here.

• Difficulty level: Easy/Moderate
• Elevation: 462m/1519ft
• Estimated time: 10-25mins
• Entrance fee: 60RMB 
• Opening times: 5am-8pm

This was the most popular mountain I saw in Xingping, lot’s of tourists and tour companies seemed to be visiting here endlessly. Although the views are spectacular, the route up the mountain and the platforms have been catered for tourists. So there won’t be climbing a rocky surfaces but the views from the peak are surreal.

After all, Xianggong Mountain was featured in and won a photography competition quite recently.

You can book a tour company to drive you from Xingping Ancient Town to the mountain and back. Alternatively, you can catch a ferry across the river and ride a scooter or walk to the mountain. I must say, if you’re planning to walk you’ll need to give yourself a few hours head start.

I actually stumbled upon this place by accident. Google maps told me this was “Laozhai Mountain” (the one near Xingping) and I just decided to trust it anyway. However, if you’re unaware, Google maps doesn’t exactly work well in China. So, we ended up driving 1.5 hours north-west of Yangshuo and arrived at “Yangdixiang, Yangshuo County”.

This was one of the best mistakes I had made on my trip! This mistake took us through some of rural China filled with small villages, farmland, curvy roads and mountainous views. We eventually approached the Li River where we recharged our bikes and ran into our next issue. We needed to get across the river but there was no bridge in sight.

Luckily, the staff near the river recommended that we ask a local, and lucky enough for us, a kind man took us across for 15RMB. Once we made it across we were greeted with some remote villages and a countryside.

Unfortunately for me, my bike didn’t charge properly back at the Li River! The hills here are extremely steep and definitely not meant for electric scooters. This resulted in me walking, running, and coasting with my bike, with my friend mostly pushing me with his bike for half of the way.

Anyway, after making our way through Yangdixiang, we eventually made our way back to Xingping and the actual Laozhai Mountain.

If you look at the back of the 20-yuan note, you’ll notice a picturesque landscape that is located here in Xingping. You can see this location by taking a bamboo raft from “Xingping Sec. Lijiang Raft Floating” (name on google maps) or take in the view from nearby platforms.