The Story of Our Trip Through Southern China

Spoiler alert: we loved it. Plus, detailed tips for planning your own trip to China.

Brent and I recently spent ten days in Southern China — and, yes, we truly loved it.

We were on a private tour, and we traveled to various areas via three legs of high-speed rail. We were met in each new location by one of three different guides, who then took us on a series of van trips, as well as one extended boat trip.

The tour included all transportation; English-speaking, licensed guides; eight nights of accommodations; all breakfasts and lunches (but no dinners); as well as admissions to included attractions, accident insurance, and travel planning and assistance.

Our trip took us a thousand kilometers into China’s interior.

The price was $4360 USD for both of us, $2180 per person, or $484 a day — and we both agree that it was among the best “travel” dollars we’ve ever spent.

This is the story of our whole trip, and exactly why we liked it so much.

At the end, we’ll share details about the tour company we used, as well as detailed travel tips for any Westerners visiting China.

DAY ONE, GUANGZHOU: Possibly the Largest City in the World

We flew from Taiwan to Guangzhou, China, which is where our tour was scheduled to start the next day.

We also read that the greater Guangzhou area has a population of nearly forty million, making it arguably the largest urbanized area in the world.

But that didn’t make any sense. We’d never even heard of the city!

Then we learned that, until the 80s, it was known in the West by an Anglicized name: Canton. This, we’d heard of.

We chose to spend the night at the hotel that the travel agency had arranged for us for the first night of the tour. We also wished we’d simply arranged a transport from the airport, as our rideshare didn’t work, and getting a cab was a major hassle.

Our guide, Wanda, met us at the hotel the following morning.

We were only in Guangzhou for a single day of sightseeing, and the highlight was definitely Qingping Market: a massive market that spans several city blocks and multiple levels, and specializes in dried herbs, traditional medicines, and, most famously, a wide variety of dried seafood. Buyers from all over China come to purchase dried sea scallops, shrimp, abalone, and, yes, fish stomachs, which apparently make a delicious soup.

Sadly, we also saw lots of dried shark fins for shark fin soup — real ones, not the fake gelatin ones like we’ve seen in many other Asian countries.

And we saw a very expensive mummified caterpillar that grows a fungus on its head; together, they apparently make a powerful aphrodisiac.

Wanda was wonderful, full of fascinating insight about both Guangzhou and China in general.

She even helped us get through security at the train station, which had check-in regulations that we weren’t used to, and also made sure we got on the right train, which was fairly confusing. But most of the officials did speak English, and most signs were in English too.

DAY TWO, GUILIN: An Amazing Cave and Stunning City Park

A high-speed train whisked us from Guangzhou to Guilin, where we were met by our next guide, Steven, who would accompany us for the next two days.

(Since Chinese names can be challenging for Westerners to pronounce, it’s common practice for many Chinese to use English names. We asked all our guides for their real names, but try as we might, we really couldn’t pronounce them.)

First up was Reed Flute Cave, whose stunning geological features are illuminated by brilliantly colored lights.

“We Chinese do love our colored lights,” Steven admitted.

Guilin, with a population of five million, is another massive Chinese city we’d never heard of, and this time we didn’t even have the excuse of at least knowing an Anglicized name.

It’s also a massive tourist hub. Thing is, it’s mostly for Chinese tourists from other parts of the country.

The centerpiece of the city’s tourist area is a network of walkways around a river and several lakes, one of which is home to two stunning pagodas: the gold Pagoda of the Sun and the silver Pagoda of the Moon.

Steven was right: the Chinese love their colored lights. And we did too.

DAY THREE, YANGSHUO: Cruising the Li River — and a Light Show on the River

Finally, we came to something we had heard of: the Li River and the dramatic karst mountains that surround the area.

Chinese artists have painted these ancient mountains for centuries, and they’re arguably the second-most famous site in China (after the Great Wall). They’re so important to Chinese culture that they appear on the twenty-yuan note.

In fact, if there was one drawback to this part of the trip, it’s that there were still a lot of Chinese tourists. Our boat was just one in a long line of vessels that made the four-hour trip down the river every day (and then traveled the slower journey upstream at night).

That night, we attended Impression Sanjie Liu, which is an outdoor performance (and light show) created by the same fellow who did the stunning opening ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

It was performed on the River Li in a unique outdoor riverside theater that seats 2900, with the karst mountains providing a spectacular backdrop.

Meanwhile, the nightly show has a cast of 600 — and no, that is not a typo.

DAYS FOUR AND FIVE, PING’AN VILLAGE: Hiking the Longji Rice Terraces

The Li River and the surrounding mountains were impressive, but the highlight of the entire trip for both Brent and me was definitely the Longji Rice Terraces: ancient man-made “paddies” of water dug into the steep hillsides to grow rice.

We spent the day hiking and slept that night in the village of Ping’an, which is mostly inaccessible by car, in a rustic lodge-like hotel with a stunning view of the mountains.