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Province of Guilin, Guilin City

GUILIN (Osmanthus Forest) is one of China's worst tourist traps, entirely dependent on visitors for its income and flaunting an expensive service industry tailored to the well-heeled tour groups that are forever passing through. Well planted with trees and laden with bizarrely shaped, legend-ridden outcrops, the city is an attractive enough place to linger before embarking on the more interesting Li River cruise , but there are downsides - especially if you're on a budget. Most obviously, locals unable to tap the tourist dollar have to suffer spiralling living costs, and most independent travellers detest the mercenary attitudes of Guilin's all too worldly inhabitants - avoid letting students guide you around, unless you want to end up footing the bill at the most expensive restaurant they can find. If all this sounds daunting, it's quite simple to abandon Guilin's high prices for the more mellow village of Yangshuo , just ninety minutes away to the south, and come here on a day trip.

The capital of Guangxi from the Ming dynasty until 1914, Guilin only started to play any significant role in history after losing that rank to Nanning. Sun Yatsen planned the Nationalists' "Northern Expedition" here in 1925; the Long Marchers were soundly trounced by Guomindang factions outside the city nine years later; and the war with Japan saw more than a million refugees hiding out in Guilin, until the city was occupied by the invaders - events harrowingly recounted in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. Wartime bombing spared the city's natural monuments but turned the centre into a shabby provincial shell, neatened up since the late 1980s by a self-concious beautification project involving fines for littering, planting every available open space with flowers, and lining streets with sweet-scented osmathus trees. All this lightens the modern, high-density architecture and heavy pedestrian and motor traffic, but it's the famous hills that are Guilin's focus of interest, not the city itself.

The City
Before starting a tour of Guilin's hills, head 2km north of the train station to where Zhongshan Lu cuts between Rong Hu (Banyan Lake) and Shan Hu (Fir Lake), named after the trees which once grew here. The lakes originally formed the moat that surrounded the Tang city walls. Their last trace survives in Gunan , the old South Gate (now an expensive teahouse), and the area surrounding the moat has been landscaped and planted with willow, peach and kumquat trees. For an overall view of the city , wander east to the Lijiang Hotel on Shanhu Bei Lu, and take the lift to the thirteenth floor. From here you look south to riverside Elephant Trunk Hill , said to be the body of a sick imperial baggage elephant who was cared for by locals and turned to stone rather than rejoin the emperor's army. You can cross to the hill by ferry from Nanhuan Lu, or walk over via a bridge; either way it's ¥10 admission, which also gives you the chance to climb up to a crumbling pagoda, or have your photo taken holding a parasol while you sit next to a cormorant on a brightly coloured bamboo raft.

Guilin's three most central peaks are within a twenty-minute walk north of here, close to the river. Two kilometres up along Binjiang Lu is Fubo Shan , a hill where the giant Jie Die fought a demon which was descending on Guilin with a vanguard of deadly animals. The demon was vanquished and the city never troubled by evil spirits again. At its foot is Huanzhu Dong (Returned Pearl Cave), named after the story of a guilt-stricken fisherman who returned a sleeping dragon's stolen treasure. Climb to Fubo's summit and you pass three hundred Buddha images, carved into the rock during the Tang and Song dynasties.

A further ten minutes' walk north brings you to riverside Diecai Shan (Folded Brocade Hill), its limestone seams eroded into a series of small peaks, supposedly resembling a pile of interlaced fabric. The same distance west of Fubo is Duxiu Feng (Solitary Beauty Peak), which stands within the grounds of the mansion of Zhu Shouqian , Guilin's fourteenth-century ruler and grandson of the emperor Hongwu. Apart from the gate, there's little of the original left; the present building once served as Sun Yatsen's office and is now the home of the Guangxi Teachers' College. Three hundred and six steps lead to the top of the peak, where views once again make the climb worthwhile.