Down the Li River from dreary Guilin is the flourishing tourist hangout of Yangshuo, where diminutive guide Li Yunzhao plies her trade waving a book of commendations.
The illiterate ethnic Zhuang speaks fluent English, gleaned entirely from backpackers who tend to spend a few days relaxing in the cafes that have sprung up in the past few years.
Fifteen years ago when I first came here, tagging along in the press pool behind then visiting American vice-president George Bush, Yangshuo was just another muddy and ramshackle village.
Now you can eat out in a cafe along a paved street and have a candlelit dinner of pizza, burritos, lasagne and the inevitable banana pancakes. There is an Internet cafe, direct express buses to Hong Kong and shops selling a fine collection of carvings despoiled from great landlord houses in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.
Ms Li offers something different, though - she takes guests around the local villages and invites them to stay in her house, where she cooks for them.
In a land where all visits are normally so closely shepherded, this opens up a rare window for both sides to glimpse a different world.
'I've lived here all my life and until I met the foreigners, I could never see this as beautiful,' said Ms Li as we drifted past the 'Bowlerhat Hills'.