To find that watercolour landscape of molar-like hills, lazy rivers and standing oarsman that hang on the walls of your local Chinese takeaway, go to the Li River. The river is at its most splendid around the city of Guilin – some 400km northeast of the Vietnamese border – where it’s inspired painters and poets for generations. The best way to enjoy the river is to take a cruise, past paddy fields, wallowing buffalo and cormorant fishermen – who train the birds to pluck fish out of the water for them.

I did this, taking a boat to the easygoing market town and popular backpackers’ base of Yangshuo, before holing up there for a few days. It’s the kind of town that sucks you in with a great pedestrian strip full of traveller-friendly cafes, bars and restaurants and a laid-back feel. And there’s plenty to do during the day too – good mountain biking through nearby rural villages, limestone caverns to explore and splash around in and lots of good hikes around too. Be sure to book a night-time trip with a cormorant fisherman, and head out to the river for the spectacular sound, light and theatre show on the river too: extravagant against the mountainous backdrop.

With foreigners a common sight in town, it’s also an ideal place to go about your business without attracting undue attention, and get by with the minimum of linguistic difficulty… Yangshuo’s popular with young Chinese from all over the country for its English-language schools, so there are plenty of people interested in practising the language who won’t try to sell you anything.

It’s popularity with tourists hasn’t spoiled the town though. It remains a living, working, gutsy town where you can buy and eat all manner of slithering things in open-air food markets – though the whole barbecued dog got first prize for revulsion value.

Provincial China at it’s most accessible and fascinating; it’s easy to come for a few days and end up staying a couple of weeks.