Guangxi
Guangxi's best-known attraction is Guilin, perhaps the most eulogized of all Chinese sightseeing areas. While most travelers spend some time in the nearby town of Yangshuo, few make it to other parts of Guangxi. Yet rich minority regions, some accessible only by water, border Guizhou in the north, and there are less touristed rock paintings on the Zuo Jiang (Left River), not far from Nanning. Guangxi also has an easily accessible border crossing with Vietnam near the town of Pingxing.
Guangxi first came under Chinese sovereignty when a Qin dynasty army was sent southwards in 214 BC to conquer what is now Guangdong and eastern Guangxi; two earlier attempts by Emperor Qin Shi Huang had wrested little effective control from the Zhuang People.
The situation was complicated in the northern regions by the Yao (Mien) and Miao (Hmong) people, who had been driven there from their homelands in Hunan and Jiangxi by the advance of the Han Chinese settlers. Unlike the Zhuang, who easily assimilated Chinese customs, the Yao and Miao remained in the hill regions, often cruelly oppressed by the Han. There was continuous conflict with the tribes, with uprisings in the 1830s and again during the Taiping Rebellion, which began in Guangxi.
Today the Zhuang are China's largest minority, with well over 15 million people (according to a 1990 census) concentrated in Guangxi. Although they are virtually indistinguishable from the Han Chinese (the last outward vestige of their original identity being their linguistic links with the Thai people), in 1955 Guangxi Province was reconstituted as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Besides the Zhuang, Miao and Yao minorities, Guangxi is home to smaller numbers of Dong, Maonan, Mulao, Jing (Vietnamese Gin) and Yi peoples. Until recently, more than 75% of Guangxi's population was non-Han.
China's first canal was built in Guangxi after the emperor gained a foothold in the Qin dynasty. However, the scattered Han had little ability to use the canal to much economic advantage and the province remained comparatively poor until the 20th century. The first attempts at modernizing Guangxi were made during 1926-27 when the ¡®Guangxi Clique', who were the main opposition to Chiang Kaishek within the Kuomintang, controlled much of Guangdong, Hunan, Guangxi and Hubei. After the outbreak of war with Japan, the province was the scene of major battles and substantial destruction.
Guangxi remains one of China's less affluent provinces, although you might not realize this if you only visit the major centres of Nanning, Liuzhou, Wuzhou and Guilin.
