Rail lines, roads and rivers from all over Guangxi, China and beyond converge on LIUZHOU , a city with morbid connotations in the Chinese mind, as its local cedar wood was once much prized for coffins. An untidy, manufacturing conglomeration between Guilin and Nanning, it doesn't have much to keep you unless you need to change transport, though the surrounding bald hills theoretically harbour settlements of ethnic Yao, Miao and others. In practice, however, these communities are well integrated into the majority Zhuang-Han populace, and it's only during festivals (dates and places can be obtained from the CITS in Liuzhou) that you'll see much beyond the everyday rural scenes common to all of southwestern China.

In earlier times Liuzhou itself was a posting for disgraced court officials such as Liu Zongyuan , who was transferred here as governor in 815 AD. His poetry, expressing the hard lot of working people, has recently become popular again, and the city's only real sight is the temple built in his honour in Liusi Park , due east of Liuzhou Square. The park is very peaceful and has some impressively large trees. Paths wind around a deep pond to Liu's tomb, a grander version of the circular cairns littering the fields out of town, and the temple itself, where there's a stone rubbing of his portrait and explanations in Chinese of his various good deeds as governor.