Experience the best of Xingyi

Xingyi is a county-level city in the Qianxinan prefecture, in the south-west of Guizhou province, close to the borders with Yunnan and Guangxi. It is a quiet provincial town, and most visitors come for the countryside around it, where the Buyei and Miao peoples have long lived among limestone hills, rice terraces and small farms.

Wanfenglin, the Forest of Ten Thousand Peaks, is a sea of green limestone cones that stretches over the farmland to the horizon, and it is among the best-known karst landscapes in China. The Maling River Gorge, a long, narrow fissure often called the Scar of the Earth, is cut deep into the plateau, with many waterfalls dropping from its walls.

Local meals bring together the sour soups, chilli and sticky rice of Guizhou cooking, with plenty of pork and river fish. The waterfalls are at their fullest after the summer rains, and the mild climate of the plateau keeps the fields green.