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We skipped Guilin’s karst hills and visited Longzhou in Guangxi, China instead – and this is what we found
Guangxi’s little-visited Longzhou is a former French treaty port that offers all the karst peak sights and historic insight of far-more crowded locales
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The visit to Longzhou begins unpromisingly.
Why, the policeman at a checkpoint on the edge of the city wants to know, am I going to a little-known town two hours’ drive southwest of the Guangxi provincial capital of Nanning.
“Lüyou,” I say. Tourism.
“Mei you shenme hao wan,” he objects. There’s nothing interesting there.
He flicks nervously through the pages of my passport.
“There’s the old French consulate,” suggests the minibus driver, who has come over to see about the delay. The other passengers remain slumped in their comfy, reclinable seats.
The policeman concedes there is at least that.
Former China resident Peter Neville-Hadley is the author of multiple guides and reference works on China, and writes on Chinese culture and on cultural travel in general for assorted periodicals. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Sunday Times (UK), and numerous other newspapers and magazines around the world.
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