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苍苍森八桂，兹地在湘南。
江作青罗带，山如碧玉篸。
户多输翠羽，家自种黄甘。
远胜登仙去，飞鸾不假骖。
韩愈·送桂州严大夫同用南字
Guilin is a city in the northeast of China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It has a land area of 27,809 square kilometers (10,737 km 2 ), a bit bigger than the Republic of Rwanda and a little smaller than Republic of Haiti. It is situated on the west bank of the Lijiang River and borders Hunan province to the north. The city has long been renowned for its picturesque karst landscapes.
Guilin is one of China’s most popular tourist destinations, and the epithet “The Best Scenery on Earth” is often associated with the city. The State Council of China has designated Guilin a National Famous Historical and Cultural City.
As of the end of 2020, Guilin administered seventeen county-level divisions, including 6 districts, 8 counties, 2 autonomous counties, and 1 county-level city.
● Xiufeng District
● Xiangshan District
● Diecai District
● Qixing District
● Yanshan District
● Lingui District
● Yangshuo County
● Lingchuan County
● Xing’an County
● Quanzhou County
● Yongfu County
● Ziyuan County
● Guanyang County
● Pingle County
● Gongcheng Yao Autonomous County
● Longsheng Various Ethnic Groups Autonomous County
● Lipu City
The population of Guilin is 4,931,137 as of the 2020 census (4,747,963 as of the 2010 census). Among the city’s permanent residents, 2,592,914 people live in urban areas,accounting for 52.58%; 2,338,223 people live in rural areas, accounting for 47.42%.
The largest ethnic group in the city is Han Chinese, accounting for 83.36% of the total population. This is followed by Yao at 7.83% and Zhuang at 5.73%. Citizens of Guilin’s urban area speak Southwestern Mandarin, a dialect of Mandarin, while Pinghua is predominantly spoken in the suburbs and surrounding areas.
There are more than 50 ethnic groups distributed throughout the area, and the minority population is 86,099. Yao, Zhuang, Miao, Dong and Hui account for 97.7% of the ethnic groups.
There are 11 institutions with full-time bachelor programs in the city.
● Special Operation College of PLA
● Guangxi Normal University
● Guilin University of Electronic Technology
● Guilin University of Technology
● Guilin Medical University
● Guilin University of Aerospace Technology
● Guilin Tourism University
● Guilin University
● Guilin Institute of Information Technology
● Nanning College of Technology in Guilin
● Guangxi Arts University in Guilin
The GDP per capita was ¥41,891 (ca. US$6,569) in 2020, ranked no. 134 among 659 Chinese cities.
Local industries: condoms, pharmaceutical goods, tires, machinery, fertilizer, silk,perfume, wine, tea, cinnamon, herbal medicine.
Local agricultural products: Shatian pomelo, summer orange, monkfruit, ginkgo, moon persimmon, lipu taro, Sanhua alcohol, pepper sauce, fermented bean curd, Guilin rice noodles,water chestnut, grain, fish and dried bean milk cream in tight rolls.
Guilin is twinned with:
Kumamoto City, Japan – Guilin, Oct. 1st, 1979
Hastings, New Zealand – Guilin, Mar. 4th, 1981
Orlando, United States – Guilin, May, 14th, 1986
Jeju, South Korea – Guilin, Oct. 29th, 1997
Toruń, Poland – Guilin, Aug. 29th, 2010
Nishikatsura, Yamanashi, Japan – Lingchuan County, Aug. 30th, 2006
MuratPasa, Turkey– Guilin, Oct. 23rd, 2013
Morehead-Rowan, United States – Yangshuo County, Dec. 29th, 2011
Annecy-le-Vieux, France – Yangshuo County, Feb. 1st, 2013
Hévíz, Hungary – Guilin, Oct. 30th, 2015
Halong City, Vietnam – Guilin, Feb. 24th, 2018
Targoviste, Romania – Guilin, Mar. 26th, 2020
● Jingjiang Princes’ City
● Reed Flute Cave
● Silver Cave
● the Li River
● Yangshuo
● Seven-star Cave and Seven Star Park
● Camel Mountain
● Elephant Trunk Hill
● Piled Festoon Hill
● Crescent Hill
● Fubo Hill
● Nanxi Hill
● Erlang Gorge
● Huangbu (Yellow Cloth) Beach
● Moon Hill
● Longsheng Rice Terrace
● Daxu Ancient Town
● Xingping Ancient Town
● Duxiu, Solitary Beauty Peak
● Liusanjie Landscape Garden
● Yao Hill
● Sun and Moon Pagodas
● the Longtanjiang River
● Bajiaozhai Village
The five mountain ranges that make up the Nanling Mountains are:
● Yuecheng Mountains
● Dupang Mountains
● Mengzhu Mountains
● Qitian Mountains
● Dayu Mountains
The Nanling, also known as the Wuling (“Five Mountains”), is a major mountain range in Southern China that separates the Pearl River Basin from the Yangtze Valley and serves as the dividing line between the south and central subtropical zones. The Nanling Mountains run west to east 1,400 kilometers (870 mi). The main range of Nanling Mountains stretches approximately 600 kilometers (370 mi) from west to east—from Guilin and Hezhou of eastern Guangxi to Ganzhou of southern Jiangxi province. It runs north to south approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi)—from Yongzhou and Chenzhou of southern Hunan province to Qingyuan and Shaoguan of northern Guangdong province. The mountains forming the ranges are generally of moderate altitude, the highest point being the summit of Kitten Mountain (also Mao’er Mountain) at 2,141.5 meters (7,026 ft) in Ziyuan County, Guilin.
The Nanling Mountains were named in the Qin Dynasty when the character “ling”referred to a mountain, and there are a lot of interesting historical events associated with these mountains. Since the construction of the Lingqu Canal, Nanling has become a corridor on which Chinese ethnic groups migrate from the Central Plains into Lingnan, which is south of the Nanling. Five mountains were named after the five major military fortresses constructed in the Nanling during the First Emperor of Qin’s attack on the Baiyue Tribes. Five ancient roads run through the mountains, Yuechengling Road, Mengzhuling Road, Qitianling Road, Lingling-Guiyang Path and Dayuling Road. The Nanling Mountains form cultural boundaries,and on the south of the mountains is Lingnan cultural area.
The mountain range is significant for other reasons, as well. The source of the 164-kilometer-long Li River (the Li Jiang) is on Kitten Mountain in the Yuecheng Mountain Range. The Li River flows to Pingle, where it merges with the Lipu River and the Gongcheng River to become the Gui River. In Wuzhou, the Gui River feeds into the Xijiang River, which is the western tributary of the Pearl River of Guangdong province.
There is something quite interesting related to the Li River, and it is worth noting here.The upper course of the Li River is connected by the ancient Lingqu Canal to the Xiang River,which flows north into the Yangtze. According Guihai Yuheng Zhi , an important geographical treatise written by Fan Chengda (Chinese geographer, poet, and politician, of the Song Dynasty), the twin rivers Li and Xiang both originate in Haiyang of Lingchuan County, but they separate after flowing parallel to each other for more than 100 miles. After parting ways,the Li flows south, while the Xiang heads north. It is from this separation that the two rivers were given their names. Here is how the names were given. The Chinese word Xiangli (相离) means “separation”. For each of the two characters in this word, 相 (xiang) and 离 (li), the radical component 氵(meaning “water”) was added to the left side. This produced the resulting characters 湘 (xiang) and 漓 (li), the names of these two rivers. Since the time these names were given, these two Chinese characters have been used exclusively to refer to the Xiangjiang and Lijiang rivers.