The Most Beautiful Rivers in China

       Down on the distant Vietnamese frontier in China’s rural south, Guangxi is among the country’s poorest provinces, lacking the mineral wealth or industrial infrastructure of neighbouring Guangdong or Hunan. But its peerless karst landscape draws hundreds of thousands of tourists from the eastern seaboard – China’s famous new middle class.While planning a six-week trip last summer, I had misgivings about going there. With so much China, why bother with one of the country’s major attractions? But the tourists themselves turned out to be an attraction, and it was impossible not to absorb some of the boundless pleasure they found in their own country. In addition, in one of the many contradictions of the Middle Kingdom, they all goggled at the same few sights, so, as Guangxi is the size of Great Britain, that left a lot of empty space to explore.
           A large herd of giggling tourists took it in turns to  hold up a 20-yuan note and pose for the camera. Behind them, a river teemed with identical bamboo rafts. It was that thing most beloved of the Chinese tourist: a ritual. But why the note? Across the river, the fabled karst peaks of north-east Guangxi lofted into the blue sky. And that was the image on the bank note.